NEW DELHI: The Delhi International Arts Festival (DIAF) recently organised a film festival on a rare gem of Indian cinema, Bimal Roy.
The tribute to the filmmaker was organised by the DIAF in collaboration with the Directorate of Film Festivals and the National Film Archives, India to commemorate his birth centenary with the screening of five Hindi films.
Roy’s son Joy and daughter Aparajita Sinha said that their father had lived for his cinema and gave full attention to the medium and would continue to live in the hearts of the people as long as people kept coming to see his films.
Rattnotama Sengupta, daughter of the late filmmaker and writer Nabendu Ghosh who had written most of Roy’s films said that the films of Roy came out of real-life characters and out of literature. Director of Film Festivals, S M Khan and Arshiya Sethi of DIAF also paid their tributes on the occasion.
Films screened in the Bimal Roy tribute section were Bandini, Parakh, Sujata, Do Bigha Zameen and Madhumati. The films were varied for their range. If Bandini was about the moral dilemma of a condemned woman and her struggle for social legitimacy, Parakh was about greed and lust for money. Sujata dealt with the divides created by casteism while Do Bigha Zameen told the story of a zamindar‘s hold on the rural poor. Madhumati was a commercial film with lighter moments tinged with some hints of re-incarnation.
It would not be wrong to describe Bimal Roy as a filmmaker who crossed national and international boundaries through his cinema. Noted for his realistic and socialistic films, Roy made around forty features and documentaries from 1944 till his death on 7 January, 1966 in Mumbai.
After a long stint in Kolkata, Roy launched Bimal Roy Productions in 1952-53 with Do Bigha Zameen that made a strong universal impact for its humane portrayal of Indian peasantry.
Do Bigha Zameen has the additional distinction of being one of the first Indian films to win awards and accolades in China, UK, Karlovy Vary, Cannes, the then Soviet Union, Venice and Melbourne.
It is considered one of the ten best Indian films of all time.
