New Delhi, Sept 19: His first feature film appeared in 1974 and made waves worldwide, marking the beginning of a new wave of cinema in India. Since then filmmaker Shyam Benegal has forged the aesthetics of an `alternative cinema' in India, his career also charting the growth of realist films in the country. Revisiting the 20 feature films made by Benegal, beginning with his first film `Ankur' to his latest `Zubeidaa' (2000) has "unarguable historical and cultural significance," writes film historian and documentary filmmaker Sangeeta Datta in her book `Shyam Benegal'. The book, tracing Benegal's career, draws a parallel between his films and the realist movement during the period, discovering that while he influenced parallel cinema in a big way, the filmmaker has gone on to survive the decline in this genre. "Benegal remains the leading exemplar of the counter movement that survived into the 1990s and beyond, with his portrayals of real people and concerns as opposed to the escapist fantasy world offered in Bollywood films," writes Datta, who runs a London-based film society `in focus' which promotes South Asian cinema in the UK. Continuing to make films in accordance with his sensibility and not going by the trends, Benegal says not all is lost as the realism of the parallel cinema has found a place in the mainstream.

Bureau Report