Tracing the obsession of the two filmmakers with the figure of the courtesan, actor, and sex-worker, often rolled into one lonely, headstrong character type Notice the similarity in posture in the poster for Mandi (Benegal, 1983, top photo) and Gangubai Kathiawadi (Bhansali, 2022). What else do you notice? Although the web series Heeramandi was all over our screens in the…
Tag: Shyam Benegal
My dear Smita,
It is half a century since you made your debut on the Hindi film screen with Shyam Benegal’s Nishant. And 39 years since you are gone. Was it only 11 years that you worked in film? Why does it feel like you have been here with us ever since? That you see us, and show us what we are and…
The Seedling That Birthed a Tree of New Storytelling
50 years of Ankur. 50 years of Shyam Benegal, the anchor of the New Wave movement in Hindi cinema In that last light of day before it is all gone and the crickets have begun calling, a man hurries through paddy fields swollen with the rain that has fallen all day to a hovel that stands across his sturdy home,…