Mrinal Sen says he’s enthused by cinema’s newfound love for realism but is disgusted with ‘reality’ on television

Mrinal Sen, the film director who started the New Cinema movement in the ‘70s, has a startling observation about Bollywood. According to him, what started as alternative cinema back then has now turned mainstream. The trio - Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen and Ritwik Ghatak - are regarded as the pioneers of the New Cinema Movement in India which served ‘realism’ and never tried to make it palatable.

“It is interesting to find that most of the films being sold are real life stories. It may be a leaf out of history or inspired by somebody’s life. What started out as alternative cinema has now become mainstream. So truth is being told on a grander scale and on big budgets,” Sen said from his Kolkata residence. The best part of this change, according to Sen, is the fact that the audience has started accepting it.

“None of my critically acclaimed films were actually failures. I would say they were popular failures. I am glad to see that some of the films in the same genre are commercial hits. Look at films like Taare Zameen Par and Black - they are commercially successful and yet conform to what we started back then,” added Sen.

Sen is currently working on an “enhanced” version of his biography ‘Always Being Born’. “The book will be out in about three-four months and I am busy adding more texts and anecdotes to it. The edition will be out in Bengali and perhaps they will launch an English version very soon,” the director said.

But while he’s upbeat about realism in cinema, the Dada Saheb Phalke award winner is very critical about ‘reality shows’ on television. “I don’t know what they are doing. One look at it and you can tell that what is being dished out as a reality show doesn’t have an iota of reality in it. I am so frustrated with these afternoon shows that I have stopped watching television except to catch the news,” he said.