An Indian Samar

A rather unusual detour for Shyam Benegal, this. On a creative journey from the Bundelkhand region of MP, the setting of his new film, Samar, to the heart of western UP, where his next project, Hari Bhari, is located, the 65-year-old Mumbai-based film-maker has pitched his tent in Hyderabad, the city of his boyhood. But he doesn't see it as a return to his roots. The only reason I'm shooting at the Ramoji Film City in Hyderabad is the convenience, he confesses. So, for his story of five women from three generations of a rural north Indian family, Benegal has brought a whiff of western UP to the outskirts of Hyderabad. Sets, streets, interiors have been fabricated here to represent the region, he explains.

If that's a trifle baffling coming from a film-maker who's always been a stickler for authentic backdrops and naturalistic regionalised accents, both of which are in ample evidence in Samar, no less strange is the fact that this year's Best Film national award for Samar, an introspective critique of the caste system, is Benegal's first in a 26-year feature film-making career. Says he: Although practically all my films have won national awards in various categories, the best film of the year prize eluded me. I am quite pleased that the slot has now been filled.

So is everybody who cares for the well-being of meaningful cinema. It's easy to write off his kind of films in these profit-driven times, but the very fact that Benegal, as active as he's ever been in his career, continues to project his humanist, socially informed vision on the big screen,and on his own terms at that,is cause enough for unstinted applause. But that surely isn't the reason why Samar, which marks Benegal's return to a rural Indian setting, has bagged the Best Film award. The jury has lauded the work for the innovative and human manner in which the director structures and presents a continuing social evil.

Samar is based on a true incident drawn from a series of case studies on the caste system in rural MP recorded by an ias officer, Harsh Mandar. It's the story of a Thakur sarpanch of Kull village, Bundelkhand, who in '91 heaped humiliation on a Dalit community. Their crime: the installation of a hand-pump to draw water in their part of the little hamlet. The film is near-vintage Benegal mainly because he eschews a straightforward, linear narrative and employs a film-within-a-film format to unfold the tale.

Seven years after the incident, a Mumbai film unit arrives at Kull to can the story. As city-bred actors play the parts of the villagers, many of whom people the film's canvas, and the crew shoots the drama, the unit members come face to face with their ingrained caste prejudices. Shaken out of the smug belief that casteism is a rural phenomenon, they're compelled to confront the undying ogres residing within them. Can they ever be exorcised? Mindsets, the open-ended Samar suggests, are difficult to change no matter how many enlightened laws are enacted. For a film funded by the Union ministry of welfare, that's a bold stance to take. In terms of performances and technique, Samar is no different from my other films. Perhaps the screenplay made the difference, says Benegal.

In thematic terms, his next venture, Hari Bhari, charts new territory. It revolves around women's rights, especially their reproductive rights, says the director. The film, funded by the Union family welfare ministry, reunites Benegal with long-time favourite Shabana Azmi after a seven-year hiatus. It narrates the individual tales of five women which, when tied together, yield a panorama revealing how much of a struggle it is for rural Indian women to retain control on the most pivotal role of their lives,child-bearing. Besides Shabana, the ensemble cast includes Surekha Sikri, Nandita Das, Rajeshwari Sachdev and Rajit Kapur. I expect to finish the shooting by the end of August and the film should be ready by November, Benegal says.

Soon after, he's scheduled to start work on his most ambitious film to date, both in terms of budget and star cast. Zubeida, featuring Rekha, Karisma Kapoor, Manoj Bajpai and Amrish Puri, is the last part of a trilogy that includes Mammo and Sardari Begum. It's clear that Benegal has never worked with a bigger budget, but he says: The budget for Zubeida is well below any budget for that size of film. The seasoned filmmaker is looking forward to directing the flavour of the season, Karisma. An actor is an actor, he emphasises. Any actor who is successful consistently has to have talent. I see no problem with Karisma.

As Benegal gets into back-to-back-films-mode just for the third time in his long career,Charandas Chor and Nishant in '75 and Making of a Mahatma and Sardari Begum in '95 were the earlier occasions,will the streak continue? Nothing would please admirers of his cinema more.