Mrinal Sen

While Northern India’s 100-year-old film industry is best known for flamboyant dance sequences and romantic plot lines, its directors have begun to step outside established formulas and explore grittier subject matter. This program surveys the world of Bollywood filmmaking, examining the personalities as well as the commercial and thematic concerns that drive central Asia’s answer to Tinseltown. Interviews with directors Karan Johar, Ashutosh Gowariker, and Yash Chopra are included, along with commentary from choreographers, musical directors, and Cinemaya Magazine editor Aruna Vasudev. The industry’s newfound attention to poverty, homelessness, and other social concerns is examined. Several film excerpts are included.

Indian documentary about Indian film history and P. K. Nair, the founder of the National Film Archive of India and guardian of Indian cinema. He built the archive can by can in a country where the archiving of cinema was considered unimportant.

This biographical film is a tribute to a pioneering actress Smita Patil through her works a tribute to the parallel cinema. Her realistic dignified portrayals of the emerging women's movement in India creating a space for women on screen and role models for them off-screen.

Reel 12 of Gérard Courant's on-going Cinematon series.

An elusive actor is a rarity. Talking Head is about the actor Dhritiman Chaterji. In October 1970, Pratidwandi (The Adversary) one of Satyajit Ray’s most political films was released. It was a film about the time; the moment of anger, disenchantment, strikes, injustice and unemployment among the young. It was a film about angry youth and it introduced Dhritiman Chaterji, into film acting. A new actor in Bengali cinema, Dhritiman Chaterji acted in few of the most prominent films of the decade

Films Division, decides to make a documentary film on the renowned filmmaker Mrinal Sen. Officials from the Films Division go to Mrinal Sen’s house in Kolkata to officially propose the making of the documentary film on him.

Drawing the history of the Indian talkie, starting with Alam Ara in 1931, this documentary short provides a cross-section of viewpoints from luminaries of the film industry, which give some insight into the contemporary commercial cinema and the parallel stream.

The greed for the possession of the family land destroys the affection and brotherhood between siblings, Baraju and Chakadi after their father, Shama Pradhan passes away.

A British administrator with a flair for game hunting develops a friendship with a commoner who is an expert archer in an Indian village. The movie portrays the relationship between the British colonialists, and native villagers who were exploited by Indian landlords in 1920s India. This happens against the backdrop of the awakening of the Indian people against the British rule.

Subrata joins his father's business that he quits due to ideological differences. What awaits his fate now?

A small company advertises for 100 vacancies and 30,000 apply. The applicants are all from the ranks of the poor and there is a virtual riot. Everyone around is seeking for opportunities. Among them are the applicants who desperately need the job, the photographer who is busy seeking a scoop, the village moneylender who is busy exploiting the poor, the ineffective police, the employers who are advertising posts even while a six month old strike has nearly caused the workmen to become destitute. It is a story of society captured in a tiny framework of a small business. Ultimately, the workmen, the unemployed and the farmers all get to gether to protest against this exploitation.

A small company advertises for 100 vacancies and 30,000 apply. The applicants are all from the ranks of the poor and there is a virtual riot. Everyone around is seeking for opportunities. Among them are the applicants who desperately need the job, the photographer who is busy seeking a scoop, the village moneylender who is busy exploiting the poor, the ineffective police, the employers who are advertising posts even while a six month old strike has nearly caused the workmen to become destitute. It is a story of society captured in a tiny framework of a small business. Ultimately, the workmen, the unemployed and the farmers all get to gether to protest against this exploitation.

A kaleidoscopic panorama of the world. A visual anthology of twelve short stories by twelve innovative directors from all over the world.

​A pre-teenager servant boy dies of carbon monoxide poisoning on a cold winter night in the kitchen. The happy household is suddenly thrown into a psychological trauma. Torn between a sense of guilt and fear of a police case and consequently scandal, the employer and his wife expose their petty, hypocritical selves.

Burning with a desire to be a journalist, a young man gets his chance when a publisher -- the father of a friend -- suggests that he write a story on the daily life of the people in his house (several families worth of people). The material turns out to be too incohesive and abundant to work into a pointed, thematic article, and just when he is about to give up, his younger brother asks him a simple question: "How many coal burners are there in Calcutta?" This triggers an idea for a story about Calcutta's pollution -- and the aspiring journalist dreams of myriads of burner-toting citizens invading the publisher's home demanding redress. Maybe he is finally on the way to a story that matters.

This is a simple, straightforward tale about the rise and fall of human civilization that focuses solely on four characters: a farmer (Naseeruddin Shah), a weaver (Om Puri), a trader (M.K. Raina), and a woman (Shabana Azmi). At the beginning of the story, the workers in a decaying village are offered food and water if they work for the local lords. The farmer and the weaver refuse. The farmer grows food for them both, and the weaver creates textiles that uses to barter with an itinerant trader. One day a frightened, lonely woman arrives on the scene and she is taken in by the two men. She cooks and cleans, and before long becomes a source of contention. Meanwhile, the trader is observing these events from the sidelines.

The bread-winning daughter in a middle-class family fails to return from work one evening. The saga begins with worries at home, followed by midnight searches and finally a deepening crisis arising out of economic and moral constraints prevalent in the society. Yet the film speaks of hope and of strength hidden behind despair.

Bhuvan Shome is a lonely widower, a proud old man and a strict disciplinarian. Looking back on the trodden path, strewn with staunch determination and drab attitudes, Bhuvan Shome, a thoroughly unenchanted man, seeks escape in a holiday.

A young man still to find a place in the sun puts up an innocent bluff to a young girl he chances upon. They meet frequently since then. Bluffs continue to pile up. There is no way out. In a desperate bid the young man tries to break the wealth barrier. His friend, well placed in life, cautions him. He turns a deaf ear. The inevitable happens. The young man grows wiser but pays heavily for it.

A film by Mrinal Sen.

Shasanka is a retired teacher who lives with his wife and two daughters. The family is thrown into an uproar after he goes out for a walk and disappears from their lives. Each member of the family reviews her final hours and days with him to try and discover what, if anything led to his disappearance.

Subhash is a photographer from the city, who has come to take pictures of some old temples and ruins in a village. Ruins fascinate him. While in the village, he gets acquainted with a young woman, Jamini, who has had her heart broken in the past, by another visitor from the big city. Will history repeat itself, or will she find a way out of the ruins at last?

A young, idealistic director arrives in a village to make a picture set during the Great Bengal Famine. It’s a film that he hopes will reveal the problems and privations still current in rural India.

Deeply influenced by leftist ideology, this film dealt with social and political themes: A poor village boy's hazardous experience in a rich urban family.

Set in the turbulent 1930s, this is the story of a poor Chinese hawker selling his merchandise, Chinese silk, in the streets of Calcutta. This was the time when China was repulsing a brutal attack of militarist Japan and when an outraged Rabindranath Tagore wrote to his friend in Japan, the great poet Noguchi: “I wish your countrymen, whom I love so much, not success but remorse”. This film holds the dubious distinction of being the first to be banned (though temporarily) in independent India.

After being accused wrongly of theft, a slightly addled servant runs away to the city, carrying as his only real possession an axe, which he claims to have killed a tiger with. He takes up life among India's throngs of city-dwelling homeless, and for a little while almost has a decent time of it. He has a girlfriend, and one good friend, and gets by through begging and doing odd jobs.

The spirit of a condemned 20-year-old student wanders through time, linking together four stories of people struggling for survival in this gritty meditation on poverty, natural disaster and political strife in India. A middle-class family's home is no match for the monsoons, while another clan's morality is compromised when famine strikes. Young boys smuggle rice, and politicians pity the poor while living in the lap of luxury.

A young Indian man has been assured by an uncle that all he needs to land a lucrative job is to show up to the interview in a Western style suit, but the morning of the interview is fraught with unexpected difficulties.

The tragic story set in the late 1930s, just before famine struck Bengal. It tells of the marriage of a dumpy middle-aged salesman of small goods to a beautiful teenager, and how, after initial days of happiness together, a series of misfortunes strike which slowly embitter the man.

The tragic story set in the late 1930s, just before famine struck Bengal. It tells of the marriage of a dumpy middle-aged salesman of small goods to a beautiful teenager, and how, after initial days of happiness together, a series of misfortunes strike which slowly embitter the man.

A young man still to find a place in the sun puts up an innocent bluff to a young girl he chances upon. They meet frequently since then. Bluffs continue to pile up. There is no way out. In a desperate bid the young man tries to break the wealth barrier. His friend, well placed in life, cautions him. He turns a deaf ear. The inevitable happens. The young man grows wiser but pays heavily for it.

A political activist escapes the prison van and is sheltered in a posh apartment owned by a sensitive young woman. Both are rebels: the activist against political treachery and the other on social level. Both are bitter about badly organized state of things. Being in solitary confinement, the fugitive engages himself in self-criticism and, in the process, questions the leadership. Questions are not allowed, obeying that is mandatory. Displeasure leads to bitterness, bitterness to total rift. The struggle has to continue, both for the political activist, now segregated, and the woman in exile.

A British administrator with a flair for game hunting develops a friendship with a commoner who is an expert archer in an Indian village. The movie portrays the relationship between the British colonialists, and native villagers who were exploited by Indian landlords in 1920s India. This happens against the backdrop of the awakening of the Indian people against the British rule.

A father living on the fringes of a village believes that working is a fool's errand, for the lord takes what little the workers make. When a young woman enters their home, tensions begin to rise and their idle life is threatened. The film is based on the story ‘Kafan’ by Munshi Premchand

When the elderly mother of a Kolkata middle-class family commits suicide, no one has the courage to read the old woman's diary. When the eldest son returns from Germany, his anxious questioning brings to light the disorientation experienced by the family and the way world history penetrates into the fabric of individual lives.

The mistress of a wealthy man, alone in her huge apartment and terribly lonely, phones strangers in the middle of the night. One night she phones a young writer, and as the days pass and the conversations continue a relationship forms between two people who've never seen each other.

After Shokhina's marriage to Noor ends, she remarries Meher but faces many complications in her married life. Things get worse when Noor returns to India as a married rich man.

A young boy wishes to switch roles with his father, and the wish is granted for a trial period. Mrinal Sen made this film for the Children's Film Society of India, based on a short story by Rabindranath Tagore. This happens to be the only work by Tagore that he made into a film.

After Shokhina's marriage to Noor ends, she remarries Meher but faces many complications in her married life. Things get worse when Noor returns to India as a married rich man.

The film unfolds the history of India since the beginning of time to present day through the help of sculptures, paintings, photographs and live action shots. It highlights the Indian Independence Movement starting with the revolution in 1857, culminating with India declaring herself a sovereign Democratic Republic in 1950.

Bhuvan Shome is a lonely widower, a proud old man and a strict disciplinarian. Looking back on the trodden path, strewn with staunch determination and drab attitudes, Bhuvan Shome, a thoroughly unenchanted man, seeks escape in a holiday.

Bhuvan Shome is a lonely widower, a proud old man and a strict disciplinarian. Looking back on the trodden path, strewn with staunch determination and drab attitudes, Bhuvan Shome, a thoroughly unenchanted man, seeks escape in a holiday.

A political activist escapes the prison van and is sheltered in a posh apartment owned by a sensitive young woman. Both are rebels: the activist against political treachery and the other on social level. Both are bitter about badly organized state of things. Being in solitary confinement, the fugitive engages himself in self-criticism and, in the process, questions the leadership. Questions are not allowed, obeying that is mandatory. Displeasure leads to bitterness, bitterness to total rift. The struggle has to continue, both for the political activist, now segregated, and the woman in exile.

A political activist escapes the prison van and is sheltered in a posh apartment owned by a sensitive young woman. Both are rebels: the activist against political treachery and the other on social level. Both are bitter about badly organized state of things. Being in solitary confinement, the fugitive engages himself in self-criticism and, in the process, questions the leadership. Questions are not allowed, obeying that is mandatory. Displeasure leads to bitterness, bitterness to total rift. The struggle has to continue, both for the political activist, now segregated, and the woman in exile.

A political activist escapes the prison van and is sheltered in a posh apartment owned by a sensitive young woman. Both are rebels: the activist against political treachery and the other on social level. Both are bitter about badly organized state of things. Being in solitary confinement, the fugitive engages himself in self-criticism and, in the process, questions the leadership. Questions are not allowed, obeying that is mandatory. Displeasure leads to bitterness, bitterness to total rift. The struggle has to continue, both for the political activist, now segregated, and the woman in exile.

A small company advertises for 100 vacancies and 30,000 apply. The applicants are all from the ranks of the poor and there is a virtual riot. Everyone around is seeking for opportunities. Among them are the applicants who desperately need the job, the photographer who is busy seeking a scoop, the village moneylender who is busy exploiting the poor, the ineffective police, the employers who are advertising posts even while a six month old strike has nearly caused the workmen to become destitute. It is a story of society captured in a tiny framework of a small business. Ultimately, the workmen, the unemployed and the farmers all get to gether to protest against this exploitation.

‘Joradighir Choudhury Paribar’ is the story of landlords, their ego, love and revenge. Despite ancestral differences, the Choudhury family’s landlord and Indrani, the landlady of Raktadaha decide to get married. But circumstances for him to marry Banamala to save her from Parantap Roy. Roy marries Indrani to take revenge against Jora Dighi. Misunderstanding turns lovers into enemies leading to their fatal end.

In this rather routine, made-for-television movie by famed Indian director Mrinal Sen, an employee (K.K. Raina) in a large office is suddenly facing unemployment because his bosses have found him guilty of negligence. He is devastated, but he cannot lose his job since he is the only support of his family. Interspersed with the employee's efforts to convince his boss, in several different ways, that he cannot be fired are direct dialogues with the author (Shyamanand Jalan) who created the character of the employee. In these latter conversations, the employee berates his creator for giving him an impossible, no-win situation — he has no control over his fate.

The 'Century of Cinema' is an 18-part series produced by the British Film Institute to celebrate 100 years of cinema. The series includes films directed by Scorsese, Oshima, Godard, among others. Mrinal Sen directed the Indian chapter of the series.

A film by Mrinal Sen.

A young engineer marries a young widow with a child by her previous husband. In a society where taboos play a dominant role, the marital life, despite the best intentions, grows increasingly difficult and finally collapses.

A young boy wishes to switch roles with his father, and the wish is granted for a trial period. Mrinal Sen made this film for the Children's Film Society of India, based on a short story by Rabindranath Tagore. This happens to be the only work by Tagore that he made into a film.

When the elderly mother of a Kolkata middle-class family commits suicide, no one has the courage to read the old woman's diary. When the eldest son returns from Germany, his anxious questioning brings to light the disorientation experienced by the family and the way world history penetrates into the fabric of individual lives.

The mistress of a wealthy man, alone in her huge apartment and terribly lonely, phones strangers in the middle of the night. One night she phones a young writer, and as the days pass and the conversations continue a relationship forms between two people who've never seen each other.

Set in the turbulent 1930s, this is the story of a poor Chinese hawker selling his merchandise, Chinese silk, in the streets of Calcutta. This was the time when China was repulsing a brutal attack of militarist Japan and when an outraged Rabindranath Tagore wrote to his friend in Japan, the great poet Noguchi: “I wish your countrymen, whom I love so much, not success but remorse”. This film holds the dubious distinction of being the first to be banned (though temporarily) in independent India.

A young Indian man has been assured by an uncle that all he needs to land a lucrative job is to show up to the interview in a Western style suit, but the morning of the interview is fraught with unexpected difficulties.

Difficulties erupt between a married couple when their relationship gets hit by societal pressures, norms, and deep-rooted patriarchy.

Difficulties erupt between a married couple when their relationship gets hit by societal pressures, norms, and deep-rooted patriarchy.

Based on a Bengali story, Gotrantar by Subodh Ghosh.

A young engineer marries a young widow with a child by her previous husband. In a society where taboos play a dominant role, the marital life, despite the best intentions, grows increasingly difficult and finally collapses.

Difficulties erupt between a married couple when their relationship gets hit by societal pressures, norms, and deep-rooted patriarchy.

Deeply influenced by leftist ideology, this film dealt with social and political themes: A poor village boy's hazardous experience in a rich urban family.

A young Indian man has been assured by an uncle that all he needs to land a lucrative job is to show up to the interview in a Western style suit, but the morning of the interview is fraught with unexpected difficulties.

Based on a Bengali story, Gotrantar by Subodh Ghosh.

The spirit of a condemned 20-year-old student wanders through time, linking together four stories of people struggling for survival in this gritty meditation on poverty, natural disaster and political strife in India. A middle-class family's home is no match for the monsoons, while another clan's morality is compromised when famine strikes. Young boys smuggle rice, and politicians pity the poor while living in the lap of luxury.

A political activist escapes the prison van and is sheltered in a posh apartment owned by a sensitive young woman. Both are rebels: the activist against political treachery and the other on social level. Both are bitter about badly organized state of things. Being in solitary confinement, the fugitive engages himself in self-criticism and, in the process, questions the leadership. Questions are not allowed, obeying that is mandatory. Displeasure leads to bitterness, bitterness to total rift. The struggle has to continue, both for the political activist, now segregated, and the woman in exile.

A father living on the fringes of a village believes that working is a fool's errand, for the lord takes what little the workers make. When a young woman enters their home, tensions begin to rise and their idle life is threatened. The film is based on the story ‘Kafan’ by Munshi Premchand

After being accused wrongly of theft, a slightly addled servant runs away to the city, carrying as his only real possession an axe, which he claims to have killed a tiger with. He takes up life among India's throngs of city-dwelling homeless, and for a little while almost has a decent time of it. He has a girlfriend, and one good friend, and gets by through begging and doing odd jobs.

The bread-winning daughter in a middle-class family fails to return from work one evening. The saga begins with worries at home, followed by midnight searches and finally a deepening crisis arising out of economic and moral constraints prevalent in the society. Yet the film speaks of hope and of strength hidden behind despair.

A young, idealistic director arrives in a village to make a picture set during the Great Bengal Famine. It’s a film that he hopes will reveal the problems and privations still current in rural India.

Burning with a desire to be a journalist, a young man gets his chance when a publisher -- the father of a friend -- suggests that he write a story on the daily life of the people in his house (several families worth of people). The material turns out to be too incohesive and abundant to work into a pointed, thematic article, and just when he is about to give up, his younger brother asks him a simple question: "How many coal burners are there in Calcutta?" This triggers an idea for a story about Calcutta's pollution -- and the aspiring journalist dreams of myriads of burner-toting citizens invading the publisher's home demanding redress. Maybe he is finally on the way to a story that matters.

Burning with a desire to be a journalist, a young man gets his chance when a publisher -- the father of a friend -- suggests that he write a story on the daily life of the people in his house (several families worth of people). The material turns out to be too incohesive and abundant to work into a pointed, thematic article, and just when he is about to give up, his younger brother asks him a simple question: "How many coal burners are there in Calcutta?" This triggers an idea for a story about Calcutta's pollution -- and the aspiring journalist dreams of myriads of burner-toting citizens invading the publisher's home demanding redress. Maybe he is finally on the way to a story that matters.

​A pre-teenager servant boy dies of carbon monoxide poisoning on a cold winter night in the kitchen. The happy household is suddenly thrown into a psychological trauma. Torn between a sense of guilt and fear of a police case and consequently scandal, the employer and his wife expose their petty, hypocritical selves.

Subhash is a photographer from the city, who has come to take pictures of some old temples and ruins in a village. Ruins fascinate him. While in the village, he gets acquainted with a young woman, Jamini, who has had her heart broken in the past, by another visitor from the big city. Will history repeat itself, or will she find a way out of the ruins at last?

This is a simple, straightforward tale about the rise and fall of human civilization that focuses solely on four characters: a farmer (Naseeruddin Shah), a weaver (Om Puri), a trader (M.K. Raina), and a woman (Shabana Azmi). At the beginning of the story, the workers in a decaying village are offered food and water if they work for the local lords. The farmer and the weaver refuse. The farmer grows food for them both, and the weaver creates textiles that uses to barter with an itinerant trader. One day a frightened, lonely woman arrives on the scene and she is taken in by the two men. She cooks and cleans, and before long becomes a source of contention. Meanwhile, the trader is observing these events from the sidelines.

Shasanka is a retired teacher who lives with his wife and two daughters. The family is thrown into an uproar after he goes out for a walk and disappears from their lives. Each member of the family reviews her final hours and days with him to try and discover what, if anything led to his disappearance.

In this rather routine, made-for-television movie by famed Indian director Mrinal Sen, an employee (K.K. Raina) in a large office is suddenly facing unemployment because his bosses have found him guilty of negligence. He is devastated, but he cannot lose his job since he is the only support of his family. Interspersed with the employee's efforts to convince his boss, in several different ways, that he cannot be fired are direct dialogues with the author (Shyamanand Jalan) who created the character of the employee. In these latter conversations, the employee berates his creator for giving him an impossible, no-win situation — he has no control over his fate.

In this rather routine, made-for-television movie by famed Indian director Mrinal Sen, an employee (K.K. Raina) in a large office is suddenly facing unemployment because his bosses have found him guilty of negligence. He is devastated, but he cannot lose his job since he is the only support of his family. Interspersed with the employee's efforts to convince his boss, in several different ways, that he cannot be fired are direct dialogues with the author (Shyamanand Jalan) who created the character of the employee. In these latter conversations, the employee berates his creator for giving him an impossible, no-win situation — he has no control over his fate.