SHYAM BENEGAL Shyam Benegal grew up in the shadow of the Charminar at Hyderabad. Perhaps that childhood gave him two important outlooks the first of the quintessentially rural Andhra, the second of a more polished, Urduised, Hyderabad. Whatever the reason, Shyam decided, at a very early age, to grow up and make movies. In this…
“I Think I’ve Just Been Lucky” “I’m what some people call a teenage star. But really. I think I’ve just been lucky. I’m told that I was born on the night of December 28. 1951, precisely at the moment the first star appeared in the sky over Bombay. If so, that star was a good…
Nine Film Personalities Discuss Their Dream Schemes! “India” said James Shepherd in a recent issue of TIME, “stamps out movies like cookies – and most are just as durable.” At once, our film critics, the tribe that revels in dissecting and deprecating nine out of every ten Hindi films that are churned out by our…
It took me eight months to discover that I was living next door to a film person. And that too, because the chap appeared in a “daring, all-clothes-barred” gatefold In a girlie mag. Yes. My neighbour was there in B & W. in all his hairy, slightly paunchy evidence. Undressed. In disabille. There was a…
A really good film should not be concerned so much with its plot, as with its characters and the interplay of those characters. Though the characters, the intelligent filmmaker aims at establishing in the consciousness of the spectators the elements that would lead them to the idea he wants to communicate; he attempts to place…
Round and round the rugged rock, rugged lovers run the race In any formula set-up, there’s nothing better than a few digressions on Young Love. Thus, the director said ‘Let there be romance, and there was a love scene Soft music. A setting sun. Birds chirping, flying home-wards. And a boy and a girl in some woodland.…
You may have heard of East African Indian fleeing to Mother England, and Dr. Hastings Banda pelling 40 Malawi Asians Ever heard of an Indian settled in Tanzania who came back to India and turned out to be a much talked-about Hindi film director in Bombay? He is Chandra Barot, a young man in his early…
An American who acts in Hindi movies? And who’s Indian except for his fair skin and blond hair? “I don’t believe it” was the reaction of most people who met Tom Alter at the recent screening of diploma films arranged by Mr. Girish Karnad, the Director of the Film and Television of India, at Bombay.…