KIFF 2024: Parallel cinema legend Kumar Shahani’s unreleased films screened in tribute session

Kolkata International Film Festival honors late filmmaker Kumar Shahani with rare screenings and tributes from industry figures.

The 30th edition of the Kolkata International Film Festival on Tuesday (December 10, 2024) screened unreleased works and excerpts by celebrated Indian filmmaker Kumar Shahani, a prominent figure of the Indian Parallel Cinema movement, in a posthumous tribute to the director.

Shahani is a National Film Award and Filmfare Award-winning multilingual director, famously known for his work in the Indian Parallel Cinema movement with films like Maya Darpan (1972) and Tarang (1984). 

He was a student of master filmmaker Ritwik Ghatak at the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII, formerly Film Institute) and a contemporary of other trailblazing Indian film personalities like Mani Kaul. He had also assisted iconoclastic French director Robert Bresson on Une Femme Douce (1969).

Shahani breathed his last in Kolkata on February 25, 2024, at 83.

In a nearly 3-hour tribute session to Shahani at the Kolkata Information Centre auditorium on Tuesday, film enthusiasts experienced screenings of his rare works like a restored version of his diploma short film from FTII, Manmad Passenger, and his documentary on Akbar Padamsee’s exhibition at Mumbai’s Pundole Art Gallery, As The Crow Flies. 

An Introduction to The River, Shahani’s video essay on Jean Renoir’s 1951 French-Bengali film The River, was also screened during the session. Notably, Satyajit Ray was a significant part of the making of The River in his involvement during its shooting in West Bengal.

“Kumar Shahani tried to pay tribute to this great nation by trying to find a national vocabulary for Indian cinema. He tried to create imageries and voices that Indian cinema could call its own,” film scholar Sanjay Mukhopadhyay said at the tribute session. “He also was trying to discover along with his guru Ritwik Ghatak whether sound should be treated at par or secondary to image in cinema.”