Cinema today has travelled a long road. Each generation has built upon the foundations laid by the artists who came before and who altered how films were imagined, shot, performed, written, and seen. This collection gathers the obituaries of some of those figures—filmmakers, actors, and cinematographers whose work shaped Indian cinema in distinct ways. From Dharmendra and Asrani’s redefinitions of popular performance to Navroze Contractor’s technical brilliance, and from Shyam Benegal’s searching portraits of post-Independence India to the restless political energy of Mrinal Sen, these essays revisit the arguments these artists made through their work, the institutions they built or challenged, and the risks they took in pursuit of new cinematic languages. Together, they form a retrospective of the evolving history of Indian cinema itself. It’s a reminder that what we inherit on screen is the labour, imagination, and conviction of those who came before.
Read on.