Shyam Benegal

  • Shyam Benegal – Ankur AKA The Seedling (1974)

    1971-1980ClassicsDramaIndiaShyam Benegal

    Quote:
    Benegal’s successful feature debut is set in feudal AP and consolidated the New Indian Cinema movement. The politically inflected melodrama tells of a newly married urban youth, Surya (Nag, in his Hindi film debut), who is sent alone to his rural home to look after his ancestral property. Finding himself in the role of the traditional landlord, he has an affair with Lakshmi (Azmi, in her extremely powerful film debut), the young wife of a deaf- mute labourer (Meher), and she becomes pregnant. Her husband, believing the child to be his, goes to tell the landlord the good news but Surya, consumed by his guilt and afraid of being exposed, beats the man almost to death. Lakshmi then turns on her former lover with a passionate speech calling for a revolutionary overthrow of feudal rule. In the last shot, a young boy throws a stone at Surya’s house and then the screen turns red.Read More »

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