In a league of his own

A filmmaker can choose what story he or she wants to tell, often our movies are far away from the small intricacies of society and are more focused on the lustrous life on the silver screen. However, there is a filmmaker who refuses to walk the beaten path.

Benegal doesn't support the over censorship of cinema in India; Image source: Dhakatribune

Shyam Benegal is a well-renowned name in the Indian film Industry, one of the champions of the parallel cinema movement of India. His films are sharp, critical, and shockingly provocative in their context. Shyam Babu, as he is affectionately known, inspired both the audience and the industry to new heights in filmmaking. He reimagined Indian film as plot-driven with a perceptive remark on the socio-political status quo, rather than being constrained by overpowering song-dance sequences.

Benegal began his filmmaking career by producing documentaries. In 1962, Benegal released Gher Betha Ganga, his first documentary in Gujarati. A Child of the Streets (1967), one of his early documentaries, was a critical success.

While he worked on the plot for his first feature picture, he had to wait another decade until it could be made. Finally, Ankur was ultimately completed in 1973, thanks to independent funding. It was a story of economic and sexual abuse in his native state of Telangana, and it catapulted Benegal to international fame.

Benegal received the 1975 National Film Award for Second Best Feature Film for Ankur. He also had a keen eye for talent and gave more merit to actors acting skill rather than their stardom.  Ankur was the debut movie of actors Shabana Azmi and Anant Nag, who are some of the most accomplished names in actings now and have collaborated with Benegal on multiple projects.

The parallel cinema wave rode on the shoulder of the success of a series of Benegal movies like Ankur (1973), Nishant(1975), Manthan(1976), and Bhumika(1977). These movies didn’t star any big established names of the time but newcomers like  Naseeruddin Shah, Om Puri, Smita Patil, Shabana Azmi, Kulbhushan Kharbanda, and Amrish Puri who would go on to become some of the biggest names in Indian cinema.

Manthan, set against the backdrop of Gujarat's budding dairy sector, is a film about rural empowerment. For the first time, almost five lakh Gujarati rural farmers financed the movie with the help of Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation by contributing just 2 Rupees each and therefore became producers of the film. It was a box office hit.

Once the parallel cinema wave began to wane, Benegal turned towards television as his choice of medium for storytelling. He made Yatra for Indian Railways, a  travel-themed series shot entirely on the Himsagar Express (The longest-running train of India) and Tripura Express.

Then he took on one of the most ambitious projects of his career, Bharat Ek Khoj, a historical drama based on Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru’s book ‘Discovery of India’. The 53 episode series traced the history of India from the ancient to the modern era. The show was one of the biggest projects on Indian Television and no one other than Shyam Benegal could’ve done it justice.

He returned to the big screen with movies like Mandi (1983), Mammo(1994), and even received the National Film Award for Best Feature Film in Hindi for his film Suraj Ka Satvan Ghoda(1992), which was based on a novel by Dharmavir Bharati.

Shyam Benegal refused to take on the conventional path of masala Bollywood stories with songs and actions overshadowing the plot, instead, he made movies with substance, he cast newcomers based on the merit of their acting skills and he told stories which he wanted to tell, not what the people wanted to hear.

Often his movies are a mirror to society, reflecting with brilliant realism the disparities and ugliness of an unfair society. And it takes a brilliant director to present such movies artfully and gracefully.

A movie made by the farmers, for the farmers; Image source: Wikipedia