Mrinal Sen: Cinema of provocation

Illustration/Uday Mohite

In his marvellously inspiring, insightful book Always Being Born: A Memoir, the distinguished, late director Mrinal Sen (May 14, 1923-December 30, 2018) writes about his life's experiences and films, including his producers. One is reminded how a lot of brilliant Indian cinema has been backed by risk-taking producers, often unacknowledged publicly or given their due. Once, when Sen was wrapping up post-production for Kharij (The Case is Closed), he wrote, "The man to produce my next film was growing impatient - he said he had waited long enough and would wait no more… he was ready with the money… He was desperate." This, despite, as Sen himself wrote, "as has been my fate throughout my career, the film [Baishey Shravana] was a failure at the box office." His German filmmaker friend Reinhard Hauff - then president of the German Film and TV Academy in Berlin - thought it "unbelievable" how daring his producer Jagadish Chokhani was, backing independent films like Sen was making. Hauff later made a film, Ten Days in Calcutta: A Portrait of Mrinal Sen, in 1984.

Always Being Born: A Memoir, first published by Stellar Publishers in 2004, was republished by Seagull Books this year, as part of Mrinal Sen's birth centenary year (paperback, R699). Sen also wrote, among others, Montage: Life, Politics, Cinema, and My Chaplin. Sen has directed about 34 films; many of which were acclaimed at the Cannes, Berlin and Venice film festivals, and worldwide. Part of the ‘Bengal Trinity' of Satyajit Ray, Ritwik Ghatak and Mrinal Sen, the latter two were often overshadowed by Ray, and though a lot of Sen's work is distinguished, he has not always got his due. A pioneer of the Indian new wave, starting with his Bhuvan Shome (Mr Shome, 1969), his films, often deeply political, include Akaler Sandhane (In Search of Famine, 1981), Kharij (The Case is Closed, 1982), Khandhar (Ruins, 1984), Ek Din Pratidin (And Quiet Rolls the Dawn, 1979), and his famous Calcutta trilogy, Interview (1971), Calcutta '71 (1972) and Padatik (The Guerrilla Fighter, 1973).

It is so reassuring to read Mrinal Sen's experiences on the juries of top festivals like Cannes, Berlin and Venice. Imagine, on the jury at Cannes in 1982, along with Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Sidney Lumet, Jean-Jacques Annaud, Geraldine Chaplin and others, he was judging the films of "to name a few that made the cut": Michelangelo Antonioni, Werner Herzog, Jean-Luc Godard, Costa-Gavras, Wim Wenders, Taviani Brothers, Alan Parker, Yilmaz Guney and others.

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Born in Faridpur, later in Bangladesh, Sen came to Calcutta when he was around 17, studied physics and was briefly a medical representative in Kanpur. But fuelled by long addas at Paradise Café with his friends Ritwik Ghatak, Salil Chowdhury, Tapas Sen, Kalim Sarafi and Nripen Ganguly - "most of whom were practically unemployed" - and self-taught by reading books on cinema in the library, he plunged into filmmaking. His self-confidence was thrillingly brazen: he sent off a print of Baishey Shravana (The Wedding Day, 1960) to the Venice film festival. He couldn't afford Italian subtitles, so he sent it with the dialogue text in English; it was accepted in a non-competitive section, setting off his international career. He was never a card-carrying member of the Communist Party of India, but a "private Marxist" as he described himself, and deeply involved with its theatre arm, Indian People's Theatre Association, IPTA, where he met his future wife Gita, later an accomplished actress. He writes about his first film Raat Bhore (The Dawn, 1955), made in the same year that Satyajit Ray made Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road); describing his own film as a "lousy film," and that Ray's was a "classic for all times". He describes Ray as "a man of profound integrity," with whom he argued in the press after Ray disparaged a few of his films. I felt sentimental when Sen wrote of meeting Moritz de Hadeln (then Director, Berlin Film Festival and my first überboss, when I joined the festival in 1998 with the International Forum of New Cinema), as well as Ulrich Gregor, beloved head of the same Forum.

Sen writes extensively of his travels, with many lively anecdotes, but one wishes he had shared more about his filmmaking, his craft, the creative process, his mistakes and learnings as well. There are black and white photos of him at festivals and with family, cast and crew, including Dhritiman Chatterjee, Smita Patil, Shabana Azmi, Naseeruddin Shah, Om Puri, Nandita Das and Gita Sen. A
deeply inspiring book, about a life led with fierce commitment and verve.

Meenakshi Shedde is India and South Asia Delegate to the Berlin International Film Festival, National Award-winning critic, curator to festivals worldwide and journalist.
Reach her at meenakshi.shedde@mid-day.com