Nationwide Award-winning Bengali filmmaker Raja Sen passes away at 71

Koel Mallick was nonetheless in faculty, recent from her debut Bengali movie ‘Nater Guru’, a quintessential mainstream entertainer, when director Raja Sen provided her the position of Jayanti, the youngest daughter of Anandamohan Bhattacharya, performed by Soumitra Chatterjee in ‘Debipaksha’. It was 2004. Satabdi Roy and Rituparna Sengupta performed her two sisters, with Rituparna’s Haimanti turning into a sufferer of sexual violence by the hands of a neighborhood legal.

On Sunday morning, as information broke of the veteran filmmaker’s loss of life after a protracted sickness, Koel remembered Sen as a ‘no-nonsense director’ and recalled how ‘Debipaksha’, set towards the backdrop of Durga Puja, explored girls’s empowerment and the injustice confronted by girls. Rituparna, who performed the protagonist within the movie, remembered Sen as a ‘uncommon filmmaker’ whose contribution by no means acquired the popularity it deserved.

The three-time Nationwide Award-winning filmmaker breathed his final at SSKM Hospital in Kolkata on Sunday. He was 71. Sen had initially been admitted to a non-public hospital after struggling a again damage. His situation steadily deteriorated throughout remedy. He was transferred to SSKM Hospital final Monday. Sen is survived by his spouse, actress Papiya Sen and daughter. His physique was taken to Nandan, Kolkata’s movie centre, on Sunday earlier than his final rites have been carried out at Keoratala. A number of personalities from the movie and TV business gathered to pay their final respects to the veteran filmmaker.

Though Sen made ‘Nimalu’ in 1994, it was ‘Damu’ (1996), starring Raghuvir Yadav, that introduced him the Nationwide Award for ‘Greatest Kids’s Movie’. He went on to work with Jaya Bachchan and Abhishek Bachchan in ‘Desh’ (2002). In ‘Krishnakanter Will’, an adaptation of Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay’s novel, he directed Jeet for the primary time in a middle-of-the-road movie. He additionally labored with Bollywood actor Raveena Tandon in Laboratory. His ultimate collaboration with Rituparna got here in 2016 with ‘Maya Mridanga’. Sen, who started his profession with Bengali tele-serials similar to ‘Adarsha Hindu Resort’ and ‘Arogyo Niketan’, final directed ‘Bhalobashar Golpo’ in 2019.

For Rituparna, Sen’s legacy deserves to be revisited and revered. “His works have been nuanced and deep. He made movies on quite a lot of topics like Tapan Sinha. He made extraordinary documentaries on Sambhu Mitra, Suchitra Mitra and others. However did he get the popularity from the Bengali movie business that he deserved?” she mentioned. Rituparna, who’s presently in Singapore, had met Sen for the final time at SSKM Hospital.

“He was like a father determine to me. At any time when he watched any of my movies, he made positive to name me. His works are studying supplies and the actor I’m right this moment can be due to administrators like Raja Sen,” she mentioned.

For Koel, ‘Debipaksha’ was an vital studying expertise. Actually, ‘Debipaksha’ stays the one Bengali movie for which Koel shot throughout Durga Puja. As she will get concerned together with her household’s ancestral home puja, she has typically made it a degree by no means to shoot through the festive days. However she made an exception for Sen’s movie. “It was an vital puja sequence and for the reason that movie had the backdrop of Durga Puja, I shot through the puja days,” she recalled.