Dinesh Kamath's Editorial 'Thank you for your cinema, Mr. Sen!' that was published in Navi Mumbai

Thank you for your cinema, Mr. Sen!

With the passing away of Mrinal Sen, India has lost a good filmmaker. He has won multiple National Film awards. He depicted social reality in an artistic manner. He was one of the towering figures of Indian cinema. The Great Trios of Indian Cinema were Mrinal Sen, Satyajit Ray and Ritwick Ghatak. Mrinal Sen won various national and international awards, including the Dada Saheb Phalke Award in 2003.

Legendary actor Soumitra Chatterjee had worked in four of his films. He was the last of the directors to usher in the golden era in Bengali cinema. Mrinal Sen was heavily influenced by parallel cinema and introduced a new kind of film-making with his unusual camera movement, non-linear narrative, discontinuities and freeze frames — something that Indian cinema had never witnessed before him.

In his career spanning across seven decades, Mrinal Sen created 34 works and these included 27 feature films, four short films and five documentaries. His first film was Raat Bhore (in 1956) and last was Aamar Bhuvan (in 2002). Mrinal Sen’s Bhuvan Shome ushered in a new wave of film-making in India.

Mrinal Sen was a major film-maker nationally and internationally. His interest in cinema started after he stumbled on a book on film aesthetics — Film as Art by Rudolf Arnhiem. Amitabh Bachchan did his first voice over for Mrinal Sen’s film Bhuvan Shome. He was paid ₹300 for his work.

Mrinal Sen was undoubtedly one of the finest filmmaker the country had ever produced. His death is a great loss to the Indian film industry. He was was one of the greatest exponents of the new cinema which we call the cinema of social realism, a genre that began with Ibsen in Europe. He shall be ever remembered for his artistic presentation of socio-economic problems of our time. All his films were realistic and his handling of themes were always brilliant. His films will surely stand the test of time.

Sen was among the select few Indian filmmakers whose films were truly worth going miles to see. His death is an irreparable loss for Bengali as well as national cinema. May his soul rest in peace!