When I first learned that the Indian director Shyam Benegal would be the subject of a tribute at this year’s Telluride Film Festival (August 31–September 3), I had seen exactly none of his films. Now, I have seen nearly a dozen, and I hunger for more. Benegal is a giant of India’s “parallel cinema” movement, sometimes referred to as “new cinema” or “middle cinema” — in short, films whose style, subject matter and themes run quietly alongside, but rarely intersect with, the dominant concerns of mainstream Indian cinema (a.k.a. Bollywood). Admittedly, those distinctions have blurred somewhat in recent years, as commercial Indian filmmakers have absorbed many of the innovations of parallel cinema, while the decline of independent financing and distribution has forced mavericks like Benegal to find ways of working within television and the Bombay studio system. But when Benegal began, his was a voice shouting in the wilderness, breathing life into characters and conflicts all ... More >>>