Subrata Sen
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Subrata Sen | |
 |
|
| Born | May 29, 1963  Kolkata, West Bengal, India |
|---|---|
| Occupation | Film director, film producer, screenwriter |
| Website http://www.subratasen.com |
|
|
Notes
Banner: Subrata Sen Communications
|
|
Subrata Sen (born May 29, 1963) is a critically acclaimed Bengali Indian film director, writer and producer.
Contents |
[edit] Biography
[edit] Early life
Subrata Sen was born in Kolkata in 1963. After a brief stint in a bank as an officer, he joined journalism in 1987 in Anandabazar Patrika, the largest circulated daily in India. He shifted from ABP to The Statesman in 1992, then he joined Bangla live dot com, a internet magazin where he remained till he made his first film Ek Je Achhe Kanya ( The Girl) in 2001.
[edit] Career
Ek Je Achhe Kanya is Subrata Sen’s first film, which made waves in Bengal and India. It won massive critical acclaim and at the same time was a major success story in the commercial arena.
Subratra Sen’s sudden decision to quit journalism, where he worked as a correspondent in New Delhi, came as a surprise to many. Says Sen, "After working for almost a decade in Delhi and covering seven Prime Ministers of the country, I thought it was time to do something else. May be, it was my mid-life crisis."
His 2001 directorial debut The Girl (Ek Je Aachhe Kanya) -- which earned Sen the Srinivas National Award for the best Indian debut of the year as well as being an official selection to the 2001 Karlovy Vary Film Festival. This film also saw the debut performance of Konkona Sen Sharma, who is now one of the top-most heroines in Indian film industry.
His follow-up film, 2002's ...And They Dared to Dream (Swapner Feriwala) -- while commercially not as successful as The Girl, earned Sen some shelf-life in international arena, including an inclusion into that year's Locarno Film Festival line-up, proving Sen to be an emerging maverick of Bengali and Indian cinema.
Sen's third movie Vacation Blues (Nil Nirjane) was made in 2003 and was the first digital movie to be made in India. The movie became a cult among the young population in Bengal, despite attracting flak from orthodox critics because of a liplock scene between two young females. The film won the Best Experimental Film award at the Down Under Film Festival, Australia.
Sen based his fourth and fifth movies on Bengali literature. His fourth movie Suddenly for Nira (Hothat Nirar Jonno) was made in 2005, based on a short story by Sunil Gangopadhyay. The movie faced problems from the Indian Censor Board because of some reported explicit scenes and was commercially released only after a few shots were deleted.
Sen's fifth movie Calcutta Unabashed (Bibar) made in 2006 was based on a controversial Bengali classic by Samaresh Basu. The film won the best actor and best actress awards at the Osean Cinefan, New Delhi -- the international film festival of Asian films.
Sen's films are said to be the beginning of "urban genre" of Bengali films and are now course material in plenty of film schools in India. Though not as famous as his seniors beyond his home-state Bengal, Sen is the maverick filmmaker of Indian Cinema whose work, as felt in Karlovy Vary Film Festival catalogue, strongly resembles that of Pedro Almadavore.
[edit] Influences & Impact
Sen never had any formal training in film-making. He describes making of Ek Je Achhe Kanya his first training ground. However, as a child, he came in close contact with Satyajit Ray, the master Indian filmmaker, while writing for Sandesh, a children's magazine which the maestro edited. It was probably Ray's over towering influence in childhood, which initiated Sen in to delving in filmmaking.
But despite his close association with Ray, Sen has consciously avoided Ray's style of filmmaking. "Ray is a fixation of Indian Filmmakers. We have to get out of his influence and make movies which are different, " he says.
Besides Ray, the person whose style influenced Sen the most was Jean Luc Godard. "We have to break all forms and all moulds to make Bengali film survive. Godard is our ideal," is Sen's frank admission. Incidentally Subrata Sen's second film, Swapner Feriwala, is a tribute to Godard.
His first film, "Ek Je Achhe Kanya" has been acknowledged by the Jadavpur University as the “First New wave Film” for the young generation in the post Satyajit Ray era. The film has been included in the University’s Film Studies course from 2002.
[edit] Filmography
The following is the list of films directed by Subrata Sen. For many of these movies, Subrata Sen is also credited for the story, screenplay:
[edit] Director
| Year | Film | Language | Cast | |
| 2001 | Ek Je Achhe Kanya | Bengali | Konkona Sen Sharma | |
| 2002 | Swapner Pheriwala | Bengali |
Subrata Dutta, Ferdous Ahmed, Nilanjana Sharma, Dipankar De, Baisakhi Marjit, Haradhan Bandyopadhyay, Goutami Bhattacharya, Bodhisattwa Majumdar |
|
| 2003 | Nil Nirjane | Bengali | Moonmoon Sen, Raima Sen, June Malliah and others. | |
| 2004 | Hathat Nirar Janyal | Bengalil | Bikram Ghosh, Jaya Shil,Tina Majumdar | |
| 2006 | Bibar | Bengali | Subrata Datta, Tannistha Chatterjee ,Payel Sarkar |
[edit] Story and Screenplay
Subrata Sen often writes both story and screenplay of his films, apart from "Bibar" and "Hatath Nirar Janya". "Bibar" was based on famous Bengali writer Samaresh Bose's novel. Where as "Hatath Nirar Janya" was adapted from a short story of another famous writer Sunil Gangopadhay.
[edit] Sen's quotes:
"Am a normal human being. Take me or leave me. And the normal human being said, "Let there be light, sound and action..."
"Cinema is a way of life but life is not only about cinema. A filmmaker now, having done five movies and three television films in the past six years, but it's not only cinema that holds my interests. Started off long ago as a journalist with ABP, changed to Statesman and worked in Kolkata and Delhi for long years. In 2001 my first movie Ek Je Aachhe Kanya, (which was Konkona Sensharma's debut movie too) was released and suddenly I turned a filmmaker."
[edit] See also
[edit] References
http://www.cerebration.org/subratasen.html
http://www.arjoe.com/sferi/feriwala.shtml
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1060224/asp/etc/story_5881926.asp
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1040620/asp/calcutta/story_3394623.asp
http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/11092729.cms
http://www.banglatorrents.com/bangla-movies-main/3552-nil-nirjone-subrata-sen.html
http://www.tribuneindia.com/2005/20050326/saturday/main1.htm
http://www.timeout.com/film/people/355445/subrata-sen.html
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1387307/
http://www.kviff.com/en/film-archive-detail/20021385--and-they-dared-to-dream/
http://www.rediff.com/entertai/2000/jun/09kon.htm
http://www.onshack.com/57121-movie/nil-nirjane
|
|||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||
