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``I am a filmmaker by accident and an author by compulsion," claims Mrinal Sen, who stumbled on an unknown book, Film, by Rudolf Arnheim in the early 1940s, at the Imperial Library (now, the National Library), in Calcutta. As he went on devouring tomes, penned critiques on the aesthetics of Cinema, its philosophy, its socio-political relevance, he dreamt of a genre, called New Cinema. Though a disclaimer to being an academic or a researcher, with no flair for archival probe, his sheer erudition on Cinema pours in, as he reflects over these encounters with the stalwarts, the legends of the world of images, for whom Cinema became the idiom of a lexicon that depicted the voice of the times, and captured the events, happenings and mindsets of passing phases. And someone who claims to live in the instant present, this volume, his own, on himself, proves otherwise. It proves that the continuous interactions he has had and still having with the world around him have resulted in building these fascinating stories, though outrageously non-linear emanating from the kaleidoscope of life that is complex and, indeed, delightfully controversial. He`s the Last of the Mohicans. As part of the Ray-Sen-Ghatak triumvirate, in the 1950s and 60s, the era of radical chic Sen`s spark of rebelliousness remains ignited. He has kept that fire of protest burning, irrespective. Given his acute political awareness, and Left-wing orientation this adrenaline has lent fillip to his creativity. For, the themes that pervade his cinema mirror the entire spectrum of human suffering and experience; and in turn, crystallise the anger and restlessness of a restive mind that reacts against social injustice, economic deprivation and communal divide. Obviously, commercial disasters didn`t deter this auteur of New Wave, who created his own benchmark and persisted -- ploughing his lonely furrow ekla chalo. Sen, the narrator, always banked on his spontaneity, while experimenting with his chosen medium. An agent provocateur`, his films have triggered debates, defying the frontiers created and closely guarded by the conservatives. This buoyant social commentator has continued to confront, fight and survive on those very pressures that propelled him to look beyond and dream -- a dream that drew a very fine line between fantasy & reality -- a discerning distinction between fact & fiction.ISBN - 9788190224710
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Pages : 326
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