In his marvellously inspiring, insightful book Always Being Born: A Memoir, the distinguished, late director Mrinal Sen (May 14, 1923-December 30, 2018) writes about his life’s experiences and films, including his producers. One is reminded how a lot of brilliant Indian cinema has been backed by risk-taking producers, often unacknowledged publicly or given their due. Once, when Sen was wrapping up post-production for Kharij (The Case is Closed), he wrote, “The man to produce my next film was growing impatient—he said he had waited long enough and would wait no more… he was ready with the money… He was desperate.” This, despite, as Sen himself wrote, “as has been my fate throughout my career, the film [Baishey Shravana] was a failure at the box office.”  His German filmmaker friend Reinhard Hauff—then president of the German Film and TV Academy in Berlin—thought it “unbelievable” how daring his producer Jagadish Chokhani was, backing independent films like Sen was making. Hauff later made a film, Ten Days in Calcutta: A Portrait of Mrinal Sen, in 1984.

Always Being Born: A Memoir, first published by Stellar Publishers in 2004, was republished by Seagull Books this year, as part of Mrinal Sen’s birth centenary year (paperback, R699). Sen also wrote, among others, Montage: Life, Politics, Cinema, and My Chaplin. Sen has directed about 34 films; many of which were acclaimed at the Cannes, Berlin and Venice film festivals, and worldwide. Part of the ‘Bengal Trinity’ of Satyajit Ray, Ritwik Ghatak and Mrinal Sen, the latter two were often overshadowed by Ray, and though a lot of Sen’s work is distinguished, he has not always got his due. A pioneer of the Indian new wave, starting with his Bhuvan Shome (Mr Shome, 1969), his films, often deeply political, include Akaler Sandhane (In Search of Famine, 1981), Kharij (The Case is Closed, 1982), Khandhar (Ruins, 1984), Ek Din Pratidin (And Quiet Rolls the Dawn, 1979), and his famous Calcutta trilogy, Interview (1971), Calcutta ’71 (1972) and Padatik (The Guerrilla Fighter, 1973).