- Shyam Benegal is an Indian director and screenwriter. With his first four feature films Ankur, Nishant, Manthan and Bhumika he created a new genre, which has now come to be called the "middle cinema" in India. Wikipedia
- Born: December 14, 1934 (age 80),Trimulgherry
Shyam Benegal
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaShyam Benegal
श्याम बेनेगल
Shyam Benegal, in his office, Mumbai, India, December, 2010Born 14 December 1934
Trimulgherry, Hyderabad State,British Raj (now Telangana,India)Occupation Film director, Screenwriter Awards 1976 Padma Shri
1991 Padma Bhushan
2005 Dadasaheb Phalke Award
2013 ANR National AwardShyam Benegal (Hindi: श्याम बेनेगल; born 14 December 1934) is an Indian director and screenwriter. With his first four feature films Ankur (1973), Nishant(1975), Manthan (1976) and Bhumika (1977) he created a new genre, which has now come to be called the "middle cinema" in India. He has expressed dislike of the term, preferring his work to be called New or Alternate cinema.[1]He was awarded the Padma Shri in 1976 and the Padma Bhushan in 1991. On 8 August 2007, Benegal was awarded the highest award in Indian cinema for lifetime achievement, the Dadasaheb Phalke Award for the year 2005. He has won the National Film Award for Best Feature Film in Hindi seven times.Contents
[hide]Early life and education[edit]
Shyam Benegal, was born on 14 December 1934 in Trimulgherry,[2] Secunderabad, then a British Cantonment, and now a twin city of the state capital, as Shyam Sunder Benegal. It was here, at age twelve, that he made his first film, on a camera given to him by his photographer father, Sridhar B. Benegal. He received an M.A. in Economics from Nizam College,Osmania University, Hyderabad.[3] There he formed the Hyderabad Film Society.Family[edit]
Famous film director and actor Guru Dutt's maternal grandmother and Shyam's paternal grandmother were sisters.[4]Career[edit]
Early career[edit]
In 1959, he started working as a copywriter at a Bombay-based advertising agency, Lintas Advertising, where he steadily rose to become a creative head. Meanwhile, Benegal made his first documentary in Gujarati, Gher Betha Ganga (Ganges at Doorstep) in 1962. His first feature film had to wait another decade while he worked on the script.[5]In 1963 he had a brief stint with another advertising agency called ASP (Advertising, Sales and Promotion). During his advertising years, he directed over 900 sponsored documentaries and advertising films.Between 1966 and 1973, Shyam taught at the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), Pune, and twice served as the institute's chairman: 1980–83 and 1989–92. By this time he had already started making documentaries. One of his early documentaries, A Child of the Streets (1967), garnered him wide acclaim.[6] In all, he has made over 70 documentary and short films.[7]He was awarded the Homi J. Bhabha Fellowship (1970–72)[3] which allowed him to work at the Children's Television Workshop, New York, and later at Boston's WGBH-TV.Feature films[edit]
After returning to Bombay, he received independent financing and Ankur (The Seedling) was finally made in 1973. It was a story of economic and sexual exploitation in his home state, Andhra Pradesh, and Benegal instantly shot to fame. The film introduced actors Shabana Azmi and Anant Nag and won Benegal the 1975 National Film Award for Second Best Feature Film. Shabana won the National Film Award for Best Actress.The success that New India Cinema enjoyed in the 1970s and early 1980s could largely be attributed to Shyam Benegal's quartet: Ankur (1973), Nishant (1975), Manthan (1976) and Bhumika (1977). Benegal used a variety of new actors, mainly from the FTII and NSD, like Naseeruddin Shah, Om Puri, Smita Patil, Shabana Azmi, Kulbhushan Kharbanda and Amrish Puri.In Benegal's next, Nishant (Night's End) (1975), a teacher's wife is abducted and gang-raped by four zamindars; officialdom turns a deaf ear to the distraught husband's pleas for help. Manthan (The Churning) (1976) is a film on rural empowerment and is set against the backdrop of Gujarat's fledgling dairy industry. For the first time, over five lakh (half a million)[8] rural farmers in Gujarat, contributed2 each and thus became the film's producers. Upon its release, truckloads of farmers came to see "their" film, making it a success at the box office.[9] After this trilogy on rural oppression, Benegal made a biopic, Bhumika (The Role) (1977), broadly based on the life of well-known Marathi stage and film actress of the 1940s, Hansa Wadkar (played by Smita Patil) who led a flamboyant and unconventional life. The main character sets out on an individual search for identity and self-fulfillment, while also grappling with exploitation by men.[10]
In the early '70s, Shyam made 21 film modules for Satellite Instructional Television Experiment (SITE), sponsored byUNICEF. This allowed him to interact with children of SITE and many folk artists. Eventually he used many of these children in his feature length rendition of the classic folk tale Charandas Chor (Charandas the Thief) in 1975. He made it for theChildren's Film Society, India.[11] To quote film critic Derek Malcolm:The 80s[edit]
Unlike most New Cinema filmmakers, Benegal has had private backers for many of his films and institutional backing for a few, including Manthan (National Dairy Development Board), and Susman (1987) (Handloom Co-operatives). However, his films did not have proper releases. He turned to TV where he directed serials like Yatra (1986) for the Indian Railways, and one of the biggest projects undertaken on Indian television, the 53-episode television serial Bharat Ek Khoj (1988) based onJawaharlal Nehru's book, Discovery of India.[2] [2] This gave him an added advantage, as he managed to survive the collapse of the New Cinema movement in the late 80s due to paucity of funding, with which were lost many neo-realist filmmakers. Benegal continued making films throughout the next two decades. He also served as the Director of theNational Film Development Corporation (NFDC) from 1980 to 1986.[3]Following the success of these four films, Benegal was backed by star Shashi Kapoor for whom he made Junoon (1978) and Kalyug (1981). The former was an interracial love story set amidst the turbulent period of the Indian Mutiny of 1857, while the latter was based on the Mahabharata and was not a big hit, although both won Filmfare Best Movie Awards in 1980 and 1982, respectively.Benegal's next film, Mandi (1983), was a satirical comedy about politics and prostitution, starring Shabana Azmi and Smita Patil. Later, working from his own story, based on the last days of Portuguese in Goa, in the early 1960s, Shyam explored human relationships in Trikal (1985).Soon, Shyam Benegal stepped beyond traditional narrative films and took to biographical material to achieve greater freedom of expression.[13] His first venture in this genre was with a documentary film based on Satyajit Ray’s life, Satyajit Ray, in 1985. This was followed by works like Sardari Begum (1996) and Zubeidaa, which was written by filmmaker and critic Khalid Mohamed.In 1985 he was a member of the jury at the 14th Moscow International Film Festival.[14]The 90s and beyond[edit]
The 90s saw Shyam Benegal making a trilogy on Indian Muslim women, starting with Mammo (1995), Sardari Begum(1996), and Zubeidaa (2001). With Zubeidaa, he entered mainstream Bollywood, as it starred top Bollywood star Karishma Kapoor and boasted music by A. R. Rahman.In 1992, he made Suraj Ka Satvan Ghoda (Seventh Horse of the Sun) based on a novel by Dharmavir Bharati, which won the 1993 National Film Award for Best Feature Film in Hindi. In 1996 he made another film based on a book, The Making of the Mahatma, based on Fatima Meer's, The Apprenticeship of a Mahatma. This turn to biographical material resulted inNetaji Subhas Chandra Bose: The Forgotten Hero, his 2005 English language film. He criticised the Indian caste system inSamar (1999) which went on to win the National Film Award for Best Feature Film.Benegal is the current president of the Federation of Film Societies of India. He owns a production company called Sahyadri Films.He has authored three books based on his own films: The Churning with Vijay Tendulkar (1984), based on Manthan;Satyajit Ray (1988), based on his biographical film, Satyajit Ray; and The Marketplace (1989) which was based on Mandi.In 2009 he was a member of the jury at the 31st Moscow International Film Festival.[15]Recent projects[edit]
In 2008, his film Welcome to Sajjanpur, starring Shreyas Talpade and Amrita Rao, was released to a good response.[16]The film's music was composed by Shantanu Moitra,[17] and it was produced by Chetan Motiwalla. Shyam Benegal is slated to direct an epic musical Chamki Chameli,[18] inspired by George Bizet's classic Spanish opera Carmen. The story revolves around the eponymous Chamki, a beautiful gypsy girl with a fiery temper and is written by Shama Zaidi. The music is by A. R. Rahman and lyrics are by Javed Akhtar.In March 2010, Benegal released the political satire Well Done Abba.One of Benegal's future projects is a film based on the life of Noor Inayat Khan, daughter of Inayat Khan & descendant ofTipu Sultan, who served as a British spy during World War II.[19]Benegal is making his come back on the small screen with Samvidhaan, a 10-part mini-series revolving around the making of Indian Constitution to be aired on Rajya Sabha TV from 2 March 2014.[20] Along with Benegal, Dalip Tahil, Sachin Khedekar, Divya Dutta, Rajendra Gupta, K K Raina, and Ila Arun were seen at the press conference for the TV series.Personal life[edit]
Shyam Benegal is married to Nira Benegal and has a daughter, Pia, who is a costume designer for feature films.Filmography[edit]
Main article: Shyam Benegal filmographyAwards and nominations[edit]
- 2005 Dadasaheb Phalke Award[21][22]
- 1975 Second Best Feature Film for Ankur
- 1976 Best Feature Film in Hindi for Nishant
- 1977 Best Feature Film in Hindi for Manthan
- 1978 Best Screenplay for Bhumika
- 1979 Best Feature Film in Hindi for Junoon
- 1982 Best Feature Film in Hindi for Arohan
- 1984 Best Historical Reconstruction for Nehru
- 1985 Best Biographical Film for Satyajit Ray
- 1986 Best Director for Trikal
- 1993 Best Feature Film in Hindi for Suraj Ka Satvan Ghoda
- 1995 Best Feature Film in Hindi for Mammo
- 1996 Best Feature Film in English for The Making of the Mahatma
- 1997 Best Feature Film in Urdu for Sardari Begum
- 1999 Best Feature Film for Samar
- 1999 Best Feature Film on Family Welfare for Hari-Bhari
- 2001 Best Feature Film in Hindi for Zubeidaa
- 2005 Nargis Dutt Award for Best Feature Film on National Integration for Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose: The Forgotten Hero
- 2009 Best Film on Other Social Issues for Well Done Abba
- 1980 Best Director for Junoon
- 1976: Golden Palm: Nishant: Nominated[23]
- 1974 Golden Berlin Bear for Ankur: Nominated[24]
- B. N. Reddy National Award for contribution to Indian Cinema[27]
Honours[edit]
- 1970 Homi Bhabha Fellowship (1970–72)
- 1976 Padma Shri
- 1989 Sovietland Nehru Award[3]
- 1991 Padma Bhushan
- 2012 D. Litt. Honoris Causa of the University of Calcutta[28]
Bibliography[edit]
- Benegal on Ray: Satyajit Ray, a Film, by Shyam Benegal, Alaknanda Datta, Samik Banerjee. Seagull Books, 1988. ISBN 81-7046-021-2.
- Shyam Benegal's the Churning (Manthan): Screenplay, by, Vijay Tendulkar, Shyam Benegal, Samik Banerjee. Seagull Books, 1984. ISBN 0-86132-070-0.
References[edit]
- ^ Indian directors at filmofdesire
- ^ a b c Shyam Benegal at rediff.com 1999 Rediff.com, 28 July 1999.
- ^ a b c d Homi Bhabha Fellowship Council, Fellows, Biodata, "During the period of his Fellowship, Mr. Benegal wrote and directed short films on social themes with special relevance to the lower-income groups of the middle and working classes. He also visited the US, the UK and Japan to study educational television films."
- ^ "‘Book’ed for a cause — The Times of India". The Times of India. 15 October 2008. Retrieved 1 August 2012.
- ^ Shyam Benegal at ucla.net South Asia Studies,University of California, Los Angeles.
- ^ Indo American Centre, Shyam Benegal Retrospective, 2002
- ^ Shyam Benegal Retrospective London's National Film Theatre, 2002 The Hindu, 17 January 2003.
- ^ "'Manthan' made on Rs 2 donations". Times of India. 11 Sep '12. Retrieved 11 September 2012. Check date values in:
|date=(help) - ^ NDTV movies NDTV.
- ^ "In search of Shyam Benegal," LA Weekly, 29 August 2007
- ^ Shyam Benegal biography at filmreference
- ^ Shyam Benegal at Upperstall Upperstall.com.
- ^ Shyam Benegal Retrospective, 2007
- ^ "14th Moscow International Film Festival (1985)". MIFF. Retrieved 8 February 2013.
- ^ "31st Moscow International Film Festival (2009)". MIFF. Retrieved 2 June 2013.
- ^ Amrita Rao in Shyam Benegal's next
- ^ dnaindia,12 November 2007
- ^ Yashpal Sharma in Chamki NDTV.
- ^ Benegal set to film story of British-Indian spy
- ^ [1]
- ^ ibnlive
- ^ [2] webindia123
- ^ Nishant - Awards Internet Movie Database
- ^ Ankur - Awards Internet Movie Database
- ^ "12th Moscow International Film Festival (1981)". MIFF. Retrieved 27 January 2013.
- ^ "20th Moscow International Film Festival (1997)". MIFF. Retrieved 22 March 2013.
- ^ Eenadu daily, Eeenadu Cinema, Page 10, Nandi life time achievement awards, retrieved, 24 March 2013.
- ^ "Annual Convocation". University of Calcutta.
Further reading[edit]
- Shyam Benegal (BFI World Directors) - Sangeeta Datta. 2003, British Film Institute. ISBN 0-85170-908-7.
- Bollywood Babylon: Interviews with Shyam Benegal, William van der Heide. 2006, Berg Publishers. ISBN 1-84520-405-0.
- BBC's Tom Brook interviews Shyam Benegal on 25 August 2006
- Girish Karnad interviews Shyam Benegal, National Film Theatre, 2002
- Sen, Meheli (2011) “Vernacular Modernities and Fitful Globalities in Shyam Benegal’s Cinematic Provinces” on manycinemas.org 1, 8-22, Online, pdf-version
External links[edit]
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Shyam Benegal. - Shyam Benegal's Retrospective Abu Dhabi Sept27-30,2012 by Indian Film Society of UAE
- Shyam Benegal at the Internet Movie Database
- 'Shyam Benegal: A Life in Pictures' interview at BAFTA
- Shyam Benegal on Upperstall
- Awards & recognition for Shyam Benegal's films
[show]
Awards for Shyam Benegal[show]
Feature films directed by Shyam BenegalAuthority control Categories:
- Osmania University alumni
- Indian film directors
- Indian screenwriters
- Recipients of the Padma Shri
- Recipients of the Padma Bhushan
- Hindi-language film directors
- Indian documentary filmmakers
- Filmfare Awards winners
- Nominated members of the Rajya Sabha
- Dadasaheb Phalke Award recipients
- People from Hyderabad, India
- 1934 births
- Living people
- Konkani people
- Best Director National Film Award winners
Shyam Benegal - IMDb
www.imdb.com/name/nm0070867/Shyam Benegal, Director: Zubeidaa. Shyam Benegal was born on December 14, 1934 in Alwal, Hyderabad, British India. He is a director and writer, known for ...Welcome to Shyam Benegal's Official Website
shyambenegalonline.com/profile.htmlA pioneer of the new cinema in India, Shyam Benegal has been considered as one of the leading film-makers of the country ever since his first feature film, ...Manas: Culture, Indian Cinema- Shyam Benegal
https://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/southasia/Culture/Cinema/Benegal.htmlShyam Benegal. Born in 1934 in Andhra Pradesh, Shyam Benegal originated what has come to be called "middle cinema". He was initially involved in the ...Shyam Benegal - The Times of India
timesofindia.indiatimes.com › TopicsLatest Shyam Benegal News, Photos, Blogposts, Videos and Wallpapers. ExploreShyam Benegal profile at Times of India.Shyam Benegal (Indian director) | Encyclopedia Britannica
www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/60653/Shyam-BenegalShyam Benegal, (born December 14, 1934, Trimulgherry, Secunderabad, British India [now part of Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, India]), leading director of ...Shyam Benegal | Upperstall.Com
www.upperstall.com/people/shyam-benegalThe success that New India Cinema enjoyed in the 1970s and early 1980s could largely be attributed to Shyam Benegal's quartet Ankur (1973), Nishant (1975), ...Movies Directed by Shyam Benegal: Best to Worst - Ranker
www.ranker.com › Film › Films › Director FilmographiesList of all movies directed by Shyam Benegal ranked from best to worst with photos. Films directed by Shyam Benegal are listed here and include movie posters ...
Wednesday, 17 December 2014
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