One of India's foremost film-makers, Shyam Benegal's work is central to the history of the alternative cinema movement in India. He is best known and the most prolific director from the Indian New Cinema and has ranked alongside such greats as Scorsese and Herzog as the one of the finest directors of recent years. Shabana Azmi has starred in many Shyam Benegal films as has the late Smita Patel. Londoners will get the chance to see them in some of their best roles.

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About Shyam Benegal

Shyam Benegal's oeuvre is central to the history of India's alternative cinema movement. Benegal's career of 28 years spans the genesis of the movement in the 70s to an exciting trend today when arthouse cinema language is being appropriated by mainstream films. Born in Hyderabad, Benegal witnessed the peasant movement which served as the background for his first features. After moving to Bombay he made hundreds of shorts and commercials before his first feature The Seedling created history. Working in Hindi (the language of Bollywood films) allowed Benegal to reach wider audiences than any regional film-maker. Benegal is the best known and most prolific film-maker from the Indian New Cinema. The International Film Guide 1979 ranked him as one of the top five directors alongside Herzog and Scorsese. His films boast high production values and are unarguably of historical and cultural significance; Benegal said 'political cinema will only emerge when there is need for such a cinema.' and his films raise crucial debates about national identity, centre/periphery, gender/caste and class issues.

Benegal's first trilogy burst on the Indian screen with its realist aesthetic, small budget, talented repertory actors and powerful scripts. He has introduced the icons of New Cinema - Shabana Azmi, Smita Patil, Naseeruddin Shah, and Om Puri. His films mark collaborations with leading playwrights (Vijay Tendulkar, Girish Karnad), producers (Shashi Kapoor) and technicians (Govind Nihalani). Having raised funds from rural co-operatives to state-sponsored institutes and government ministries, Benegal has kept pace with changing market trends and audience tastes as evident in his latest, Zubeidaa.

Benegal's films feature strong non-conformist women and confront the problems of social change in contemporary Indian experience. A narrative restlessness makes him find new ways of story-telling to make films according to his own sensibility. In a film industry fast succumbing to forces of globalisation, Shyam Benegal continues to raise issues about minority identity, caste prejudice and women's empowerment.

By Sangeeta Datta
http://www.bfi.org.uk/benegal

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