SHARMILA TAGORE AND SOHA ALI KHAN:  TWO GENERATIONS IN INDIAN CINEMA

The Harvard Film Archive is pleased to screen the series SHARMILA TAGORE AND SOHA ALI KHAN:  TWO GENERATIONS IN INDIAN CINEMA from MONDAY MAY 16 – MONDAY MAY 23, 2011 featuring appearances by Sharmila Tagore and Soha Ali Khan.

About the series:
The films of mother and daughter, Sharmila Tagore and Soha Ali Khan represent between them the last several decades of Indian cinema – from the Bengali classics of Satyajit Ray to the blockbuster hits of today’s vital Hindi cinema, based in Mumbai (formerly Bombay) and sometimes referred to as “Bollywood.” Born in 1946, Tagore is the great-granddaughter of the distinguished Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore. She was a schoolgirl with no acting experience when the great Satyajit Ray cast her as the female lead in The World of Apu (1959).

 

Impressed by her instinctive ability to project sincerity and intelligence, Ray cast her in three more films, often in roles embodying “the conscience” of the films, as Tagore herself has put it. Ray usually paired her with actor Soumitra Chatterjee. Of this pairing, critic Robin Wood wrote, “their beauty—at once physical and spiritual—seems the ideal incarnation of Ray’s belief in human potentialities.” Tagore would become not just a respected actor but a major star in the enormous Hindi film industry in the 1960s and 1970s.

 

Besides remaining active herself as an onscreen performer, Tagore has seen two of her children become celebrated actors as well. In 1969, she married Mansoor Ali Khan Pataudi, one of India’s most famous cricket players. Their first child, Saif Ali Khan, is now a major star of Hindi films, and in recent years has been joined by his younger sister, Soha Ali Khan.

 

Born in 1978, Soha Ali Khan studied history and international relations before beginning her acting career in 2004. Her breakthrough came in 2006 as one of the female leads of the critically and commercially successful Rang de Basanti, for which she won several awards. Like her mother, Khan combines a graceful charisma with an understated acting style and has made a reputation for choosing her roles carefully.

 

This program is presented in partnership with the Harvard Film Archive, Harvard University Asia Center, Mahindra Humanities Center, and the South Asia Initiative.

The prints of The World of Apu and Devi were restored by the Satyajit Ray Preservation Project at the Academy Film Archive with funding from the Film Foundation.  Prints courtesy of the Academy Film Archive.

 

Special thanks:  Sugata Bose, Megan Rajbanshi— the South Asia Initiative; Homi Bhabha—the Humanities Center.

 

Screening Schedule:

 

The World of Apu (Apur Sansar)

Monday May 16 at 7pm

Sharmila Tagore first appeared onscreen as the young wife in the third part of Satyajit Ray's groundbreaking Apu Trilogy. In The World of Apu, the title character is now an indigent would-be writer. When the bridegroom at a wedding he is attending suffers a prenuptial nervous breakdown, Apu is persuaded to replace him in order to save the bride's honor. The heart of the film follows the developing relationship between two married strangers. This was also the screen debut of Soumitra Chatterjee, who plays Apu. Together, Tagore, Chatterjee and Ray create one the most remarkable portraits of a marriage in cinema.

Directed by Satyajit Ray. With Soumitra Chatterjee, Sharmila Tagore, Swapan Mukherjee

India 1959, 35mm, b/w, 117 min. Bengali with English subtitles

 

The Goddess (Devi)

Friday May 20 at 7pm

In her second film, Sharmila Tagore stars as Doya, the title character of Devi. Doya is a young woman in an aristocratic family in 19^th-century Bengal whose comfortable existence is upended when her father-in-law suddenly becomes convinced that she is an incarnation of the goddess Kali. Ray's dreamily sensual and slyly satiric film about religious orthodoxy was originally banned from export. Tagore’s understated performance brilliantly brings out the levels of Doya’s character, as she alternates between acquiescence, boredom, terror and even a sly curiosity about the ways in which she can profit from her father-in-law’s irrational belief.
Directed by Satyajit Ray. With Sharmila Tagore, Chhabi Biswas, Soumitra Chatterjee

India 1960, 35mm, b/w, 93 min. Bengali with English subtitles

Preceding the screening, a special reception will take place upstairs in the Carpenter Center lobby at 6pm.

 

Khoya Khoya Chand

Friday May 20 at 9pm

This period piece about the Hindi cinema industry in the 1950s stars Soha Ali Khan, in one of her first leading roles, as a fictional actress in the years just before the beginning of her mother’s career. The film’s love story between a frustrated auteur and an actress with a past is loosely based on the relationship between the great Guru Dutt and Waheeda Rehman. Khan plays the glamorous star from a poor and manipulative family, with Shiney Ahuja as the tortured writer. Khoya Khoya Chand is a valentine to a golden age in Hindi filmmaking, and Khan is a non-stop, fearless physical presence, whether singing and dancing, sword fighting on horseback or breaking down off-camera in the best tradition of the long-suffering diva.

Directed by Sudhir Mishra. With Soha Ali Khan, Shiney Ahuja, Rajat Kapoor

India 2007, 35mm, color, 130 min. Hindi and Urdu with English subtitles

Soha Ali Khan in Conversation with Sugata Bose

Rang de Basanti

Saturday May 21 at 7pm

Rang de Basanti was a box office sensation when it premiered in 2006, and it has remained a much-loved and much-seen staple of Hindi cinema in the years since. The film chronicles the growing historical awareness in a group of aimless young people once they are cast in a film about revolutionaries during India’s struggle for independence. This awareness turns to disillusion as they confront modern-day governmental and industrial indifference and corruption. In fact, the film’s nationalism as well as its trenchant critique of the present-day government created no small controversy. The ensemble cast, featuring several male stars, is anchored by Soha Ali Khan’s performance as the young woman at the core of the group of friends.

Directed by Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra. With Aamir Khan, Soha Ali Khan, Waheeda Rehman

India 2006, 35mm, color, 157 min. Hindi, English and Urdu with English subtitles

 

Sharmila Tagore in Conversation with Sugata Bose

Days and Nights in the Forest (Aranyer Din Ratri)

Sunday May 22 at 7pm

Described by Pauline Kael as “a major film by a major artist,” Days and Nights in the Forest follows four friends from Kolkata who take off for a weekend in the countryside. The all-male group’s plans for a relaxing rustic vacation are sidelined by the appearance of two young women staying nearby. With its panorama of characters, its romantic entanglements and its trenchant view of class, Days and Nights in the Forest is reminiscent of Renoir’s The Rules of the Game, and Ray’s film is strong enough to stand the comparison. Tagore stands out in an ensemble cast because she is the wisest of the characters: she seems to comprehend all four of the male visitors at a single glance, and her sympathetic bemusement is a statement of Ray’s all-encompassing humanism.

Directed by Satyajit Ray. With Sharmila Tagore, Soumitra Chatterjee, Shubhendu Chatterjee

India 1970, 35mm, b/w, 115 min. Bengali with English subtitles

 

The Hero (Nayak)

Monday May 23 at 7pm

Tagore’s third film with Satyajit Ray is this delightful, underappreciated character study. She plays an urbane journalist who encounters the movie star Arindam (played by matinee idol Uttam Kumar) on the Delhi-Calcutta Express. He is on his way to receive an award, and at first resists her attempts to interview him. Soon enough, however, he finds himself pouring out his life story to his new companion, as well as confessing his artistic ambitions and dissatisfactions along with (unwittingly) his anxieties. Tagore masterfully underplays her role as an intelligent woman unexpectedly faced with masculine insecurity. All the while, Ray surrounds his protagonists with a panoply of keenly observed supporting characters. Print courtesy of the Academy Film Archive.

Directed by Satyajit Ray. With Uttam Kumar, Sharmila Tagore, Ranjit Sen

India 1966, 35mm, b/w, 120 min. Bengali with English subtitles

 

This press release is available for download on the press page of the Harvard Film Archive’s website: http://hcl.harvard.edu/hfa/general_info.html#press. The user name and password are hfapress.  Please contact bgravely@fas.harvard.edu for screeners, additional photos, or more information.
 
 
Harvard Film Archive
24 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA 02138
(617) 495-4700
http://hcl.harvard.edu/hfa
General Admission Tickets $9, $7 Non-Harvard Students, Seniors, Harvard Faculty and Staff. Harvard students free

Special event tickets (for in-person appearances) are $12.
Tickets go on sale 45 minutes prior to show time. The HFA does not do advance ticket sales.

 

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