A PRIVATE MARXIST

MRINAL SEN : A staunch Marxist, Indian filmmaker Mrinal Sen uses film to promote his agenda. Before becoming a director, Sen studied physics at a Calcutta university and was a freelance journalist. He also sold medicine and worked in a film studio as a sound technician. It was after joining the Communist-linked Indian People's Theatre Association in the 1940s that Sen became interested in Marxism and filmmaking. He made his directorial debut with the pro-communist Raat Bhore (The Dawn) in 1956. More features followed, but it was not until his 1969 comedy Bhuvan Shome that Sen became nationally popular. At the 1983 Cannes Film Festival, Sen's Kharij (The Case Is Closed) (1982) was awarded the Jury Prize. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide.

Sen is one of his nation's most politically active filmakers. After having studied physics at university in Calcutta, Sen worked as a freelance journalist, a salesman of patent medicines and a sound technician in a film studio. In the mid-1940s he joined the Indian People's Theatre Association and at that time began to read about and study film. The association had links to the Communist Party of India and this heralded the beginning of Sen's involvement with Marxist politics. In 1956 Sen made his debut with Raat Bhore(1956), the first of his 30 (as of 2002) films. Although his first film was openly political, he achieved national status as the director of a comedy, Bhuvan Shome (1969). Influenced by Italian neorealism and the work of fellow countryman Satyajit Ray, Sen used location shooting and non-professional casts in his early films. By the 1970s he was making wider use of symbolism and allegory. Although he remains politically committed, Sen feels that the "difference between party Marxists and a private Marxist like me is that others think they pocketed truth, whereas I am always in search of truth... " Sen's films have won numerous international awards. Kharij (1982), a scathing look at the hypocritical reaction of a bourgeois Calcutta family to the death of a servant boy, took home the Jury Prize from the 1983 Cannes Film Festival.