Bengali filmmaker Buddhadeb Dasgupta has died in Kolkata. He was reportedly suffering from kidney disease. The director was 77
Acclaimed filmmaker Buddhadeb Dasgupta, the flag-bearer of the parallel cinema movement in Bengal in the 1980s and 1990s, is no longer with us. He breathed his last at his Kolkata residence on Thursday. He was reportedly suffering from kidney-related issues.
West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee too called his death an irreparable loss for the Bengali film industry.
Dasgupta was instrumental in giving parallel cinema in Bengal the much-needed attention and attraction. Some of his earlier films like ‘Dooratwa’ (1978), ‘Grihajuddha’ (1982) and ‘Andhi Gali’ (1984) focused on the Naxalite movement in Bengal.
Also read: Tollywood mourns death of renowned filmmaker Buddhadeb Dasgupta
Buddhadeb started his career as a lecturer of Economics in Calcutta. He took the role of filmmaking in 1976. He was exposed to the works of directors like Charlie Chaplin, Ingmar Bergman, Akira Kurosawa, Vittorio De Sica, Roberto Rossellini, and Michelangelo Antonioni very early in his career. This, in turn, inspired him to take filmmaking as a mode of expression.
He started his film career with a 10-minute documentary in 1968 titled %u2018The Continent of Love%u2019 and made his first full-length feature film, %u2018Dooratwa%u2019 (Distance) in 1978
During the early stages of his film career, Dasgupta made films inspired by Satyajit Ray’s realistic films. He won National Film Award for Best Feature Film five times in his career including Bagh Bahadur (1989), Charachar (1993), Lal Darja (1997), Mondo Meyer Upakhyan (2002), and Kaalpurush (2008).
He was also a famous poet with works like Suitcase, Himjog, Govir Araley, Coffin Kimba, Chhaata Kahini, and Roboter Gaan to his credit.
