At times missing out on the recognition showered on contemporaries like Satyajit Ray, Ritwik Ghatak and Mrinal Sen, legendary filmmaker Tapan Sinha will get his moment under the sun at next week’s International Film Festival of India (IFFI). This was announced by the I&B Ministry on Saturday morning.
IFFI, India’s marquee film event, opens on November 20 in Goa and runs till November 28. Harmonium, a classic film directed by Sinha will be screened at the festival, “inviting audiences to rediscover Sinha’s intricate storytelling,” according to a government-issued statement.
There will also be a special session discussing Sinha’s work titled “The Spectrum and the Soul’, featuring actor Arjun Chakraborty and scholar Manu Chakravarthy, moderated by film journalist Ratnottama Sengupta.
Sinha’s repertoire included the iconic Kabuliwala (1957), an adaptation of Rabindranath Tagore’s short story which won the national award for best film, as well as the silver bear (for the best runner-up film) at the Berlin Film Festival. His other noted films include Louha-Kapat (1958 — national award winner), Apanjan (1968) and Sagina Mahato (1970). He ventured into TV with the series Aadmi Aur Aurat (1984), starring Amol Palekar.
Sinha made films in Bengali, Hindi and Oriya languages, his films ranging from family drama to social issues to children’s fantasy themes. One of the most acclaimed faces of India’s parallel cinema movement of the 1960s, 70s and 80s, Sinha was honoured with the Padma Shri in 1992 and later, the Dadasaheb Phalke Award, the highest honour in the field of cinema in India, back in 2006.