Kumar Shahani


Kumar Shahani is a noted Indian film director and screenwriter, best known for his parallel cinema films, Maya Darpan and Khayal Gatha and Kasba. Due to his dedication to formalism, and with the reputation of his first feature, Maya Darpan being considered among Indian cinema's first formalist film, he is frequently grouped by critics and film enthusiasts alongside similar stylistic filmmakers such as Pier Paolo Pasolini, Andrei Tarkovsky, and Jacques Rivette.

Early life

Shahani was born in Larkana, Sindh, after the partition of India in 1947, Shahani's family shifted to the city of Bombay. He received a B. A. from the University of Bombay in Political Science and History and studied screenplay writing and Advanced Direction at the Film and Television Institute of India, where he was a student of Ritwik Ghatak. He also studied under the renowned historian D. D. Kosambi. He was awarded a French Government Scholarship for further studies in France, where he studied at the Institut des hautes études cinématographiques and assisted Robert Bresson on Une Femme Douce.

Career

He returned to India to make his first feature film Maya Darpan in 1972 and had to wait twelve years before he received funding to make his next full-length feature film, Tarang.
From 1976 to 1978 he held a Homi Bhabha Fellowship to study the epic tradition of the Mahābhārata, Buddhist iconography, Indian classical music and the Bhakti movement.

Influences

Shahani had considered Roberto Rossellini and Robert Bresson as major influences on his work and those who he learned the most from. When comparing the two he stated, "There is austerity in Bresson. But there is a possibility in cinema to have both: austerity and ornamentation. In Bresson, there is mainly austerity even though he aspires to have spectacle. When I work along those lines, I want the ornamentation to stand out. The magic of that reality must appear and we ought to allow that to happen. The notion of ornamentation that we have in India, the alankar, of how we play with it, that is something I like to retain in my work. And this is not there either in Rossellini’s work or Bresson’s in the works of Catholic filmmakers. When they move towards austerity, they really move towards it: Bresson in the tradition of St Augustine and Rossellini more in the manner of notational narratives."
For his film Tarang which dealt with labour issues, Shahani mentioned he consciously tried to avoid 'repeating' or 'imitating' one of his favourite films Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin. Shahani stated, "for Tarang for instance, I was shooting a strike sequence. It was an obvious point where one could have quoted Eisenstein. Most filmmakers in such a situation would do so, inadvertently and unconsciously. Even the most "bourgeois" filmmakers as it were, the most commercial ones, or their exact opposites, would all do that. That is why one should remember him, to remember what he did and not to repeat it. So I remembered him while I was shooting that sequence, constantly like a prayer. We can't help saying that Eisenstein did it such a way and let only him do like that. That is why I feel very happy with that particular sequence in Tarang. It doesn't have, in any sense, an imitation of Eisenstein."

Filmography

YearFilmNotes
1965The Glass PaneGraduate Diploma film
1967Manmad Passengershort film
1969A Certain Childhoodshort film
1970Rails for the Worldshort film
1971Objectshort film
1972Maya DarpanWinner Filmfare Award – Best Film
National Film Award for Best Feature Film in Hindi
1973Fire in the Bellyshort film
1976Our Universeshort film
1984TarangNational Film Award – Special Jury Award
1987Vaar Vaar Vaarishort film
1989Khayal GathaWinner Filmfare Award – Best Film
Winner FIPRESCI Prize – Rotterdam International Film Festival
1989A Ship Agroundshort film
1990KasbaWinner Filmfare Award – Best Film
1991BhavantaranaOriya documentary film about Guru Kelucharan Mahapatra
National Film Award for Best Biographical Film
1997Char AdhyayHindi film based on Tagore novel
2000The Bamboo Flute
2004As the Crow Flies

Awards