Shabana Azmi recalls Shyam Benegal instructing his assistant during Mandi to look after actors with ‘smaller parts’ more than the ones with main parts: “I don’t think any director before or after that could have shown such empathy” : Bollywood News
Filmmaker Shyam Benegal passed away last week on December 23 at the age of 90. He was known as the flag-bearer of the parallel cinema movement from the 1970s to 80s. A memorial in remembrance of him was held last evening in Mumbai. It was attended by a number of artistes who worked with him over the decades, including Shabana Azmi, Naseeruddin Shah, Govind Nihalani, Kulbhushan Kharbanda, Ila Arun, Rajeshwari Sachdev, Divya Dutta, among others.
Shabana Azmi recalls Shyam Benegal instructing his assistant during Mandi to look after actors with ‘smaller parts’ more than the ones with main parts: “I don’t think any director before or after that could have shown such empathy”
Apart from giving a heartfelt tribute to Benegal, the evening also saw some of these artistes share interesting anecdotes related to the late filmmaker. Among them, Shabana Azmi was at the forefront who went down memory lane in her profound tribute to Benegal.
Azmi acted in a number of Bengali films. She spoke about one such film Mandiwhich is considered iconic. Apart from Azmi, it also starred Smita Patil, Naseeruddin Shah, Ratna Pathak Shah, Neena Gupta, Soni Razdan, Om Puri, Pankaj Kapur, among others. Azmi recalled that the film had 40 actors who had to shoot together for 40 days. She recollected a conversation she had with one of the assistant directors (AD) of the film years later regarding Benegal’s empathy towards his actors, irrespective of their screen time in a film.
Azmi said, “Many years later an AD of his shared with me that Shyam had called them right at the beginning of the shoot and said, ‘These are 40 actors who are going to be together for 40 days. Some of them have big parts, some of them have small parts. But all of them are very talented people. See that you never bruise anybody’s ego and see that you look after the people with the smaller parts more than the people who have the main parts’. I don’t think that any director before or after that could have shown that kind of empathy.”
Mandi went onto win the National Award for Best Art Direction for art director Nitish Roy.
Azmi also recalled that last time she saw Benegal, which was on the latter’s 90th birthday just earlier this month on the 14thBenegal’s family had held a small function that was attended by Azmi and few other artistes who had worked with him. Recalling her last visual of Benegal, Azmi said, “After spending a beautiful hour with all of us, I saw him being whisked away with that same warm, wide smile.”
Also Read: Ila Arun fondly remembers Shyam Benegal, calls him “Bheeshma Pitamah of parallel cinema”
More Pages: Mandi Box Office Collection
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