Mrinal Sen

  • Mrinal Sen – Padatik aka The Guerrilla Fighter (1973)

    1971-1980ArthouseAsianIndiaMrinal Sen

    Synopsis
    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.Read More »

  • Mrinal Sen – Oka Oori Katha AKA The Marginal Ones (1977)

    1971-1980ArthouseDramaIndiaMrinal Sen

    Quote:
    The father of a son living on the fringes of a village believes that working is a fools game, 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.Read More »

  • Mrinal Sen – Chorus (1975)

    1971-1980FantasyIndiaMrinal SenPolitics

    Synopsis:

    Starting out as a fantasy mythological with the gods, entrenched in their fortress, deciding to create 100 jobs, the film becomes an exemplary fairy tale when 30,000 applicants start queuing up for work. The fairy tale then becomes a didactic tragedy with realist sequences (media men interviewing individuals in the crowd of applicants) when the people realise the job scheme is grossly inadequate and popular discontent grows into a desire to storm the citadel. Freely mixing different styles and modes of storytelling including direct address to the camera, with the chorus both as narrator and as political agitator (R. Ghosh, who also plays god and the sutradhara), Sen continues exploring the possibilities of a cinematic narrative that would be both enlightening and emotionally involving without descending into authoritarian sloganising. Having gone as far in this direction as he could, Sen deploys the lessons of his experiments with complex and stylistically diverse cinematic idioms in his next feature, Mrigaya (1976).Read More »

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