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Shyam Benegal, a pivotal figure in Indian cinema known for his incisive and socially conscious storytelling, died on Monday in Mumbai following a chronic kidney ailment, his daughter confirmed to India Today. He was 90.

His career, spanning over five decades, left an indelible mark on the film industry, blending art with activism and bridging the gap between mainstream and parallel cinema. He was instrumental in shaping India’s New Wave cinema movement, also known as Parallel Cinema, in the 1970s.

Benegal began his career in advertising before transitioning to filmmaking, a move that would redefine Indian storytelling. His debut fiction feature, “Ankur” (1974), became a cornerstone of Indian cinema, earning critical acclaim for its unflinching portrayal of social hierarchies and gender dynamics. The film, which played at the Berlinale, won multiple Indian National Film Awards and launched the career of actor Shabana Azmi.

Over the years, Benegal’s body of work...

Nearly 35 years after its original debut at the Venice Film Festival, Peter Brook’s epic film adaptation of “The Mahabharata” is returning to the Lido in a meticulously restored 8K version. The restoration, spearheaded by the late director’s son Simon, marks a new chapter for the groundbreaking 1989 production that brought the ancient Indian epic to global audiences.

“The Mahabharata” holds a unique place in Peter Brook’s storied career. Based on his nine-hour stage production, the film version clocked in at a still-substantial three hours. It featured an international cast performing in English and was shot in a Paris studio. The ambitious project aimed to distill the essence of the vast Hindu epic, exploring themes of war, ethics and power across generations.

Brook wanted to make a six-hour film initially, but this was deemed unfinanceable, so the decision was taken to shoot concurrently a three-hour film version and a six-hour TV version.

In the 1980s, Peter Brook’s adaptation of The Mahabharata enchanted audiences on stage and screen. As Brook’s son presents a restored print at the Venice film festival, he and his team discuss the work’s extraordinary journey

When Antonin Stahly was nine years old, his mother took him to the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord in Paris to see a production of the ancient Indian epic The Mahabharata, which translates loosely as “the great story of mankind”. More than 20 actors from 16 countries performed on a stage steeped in red earth and scarred by a water-filled trench; fire also played a leading role. Directed by Peter Brook, whom the RSC founder Peter Hall called “the greatest innovator of his generation”, and adapted by Luis Buñuel’s former co-writer Jean-Claude Carrière, this spectacular Mahabharata weighed in at nine hours, plus intervals. Even at that length, it represented a massive compression of its source text,...

Behind some bins – big wheelie ones down an alley on Dublin’s Northside – a man and a woman, both oldish, are coupling frantically. Their al fresco pleasure is interrupted when they are spotted by the man’s daughter, who’s just come out of an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.

“It’s not what it looks like, Shiv,” explains her flustered father, as he makes himself decent while the woman, short and of Asian heritage, with cropped silver hair, yanks up her tights.

“It looks like an old Irish man f***in’ a woman behind some bins,” she says.

This delicious scene is from The Dry, a daffy eight-part tragicomedy previously on Britbox, now coming to Itvx. The old man is played, with all his baffled hangdog charm, by Ciarán Hinds, who is 70. The woman behind the bins with him – and here’s the complicated surprise – is played by none other than Hinds’s French-Vietnamese wife,...

New Delhi, Aug 22 (Ians) This is a frank portrayal of the extraordinary life of acclaimed dancer, actor and activist Mallika Sarabhai, very aptly titled ‘In Free Fall: My Experiments With Living’ (Speaking Tiger).

She doesn’t hold back in talking about her “thirty-year obsession with being thin”; her addictions like smoking and how she “hypnotized” her way out of it; her fascination with alternate therapies like Pranik healing, Ayurveda and colour therap;, and the beauty treatments she uses for “future-proofing” her body so that she can continue to dance and perform for years to come.

She speaks with equal candour about her battles with grief and depression – when she lost her beloved father, the space scientist Vikram Sarabhai, in 1971; a painful break-up with a man she loved; and her ups and downs with her children, due, in part, to her own relationships.

The loss of her mother, dancer Mrinalini Sarabhai,...

The team behind hit 2019 Indian war movie “Uri: The Surgical Strike” has reunited for sci-fi film “The Immortal Ashwatthama.”

Based on a character from Indian mythological epic “The Mahabharata,” “Ashwatthama” is billed as a futuristic science fiction VFX-laden extravaganza and has been in development for several months. Veteran producer and former Disney India head Ronnie Screwvala’s RSVP, director Aditya Dhar and leading man Vicky Kaushal reprise their respective functions from “Uri.”

“Uri,” Dhar’s debut, grossed some $50 million worldwide. It won several accolades at India’s national film awards, including best director for Dhar and best actor for Kaushal.

“Every film has its own journey, however, when the team of a national award winning and blockbuster film that has been as loved as ‘Uri’ comes together, the expectations are bound to be high,” said Screwvala. “Language is not a barrier for this movie. I can’t wait to see...

Obviously No Thank You to coronavirus. Though post the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic the game is changing. Who better than the entertainment industry to make the see change so obvious. And the audience drooling over the most unimagined in the contemporary times. Is this scenario hinting at a correction in what we feel and the facts of life?

Also read:?Is this making Sunil Lahri the new heart throb?

Well, I want to believe that ?The Kapil Sharma Show? which was aimed at unveiling a book on Ramanand Sagar, fortunately thought of inviting the (actors playing) Ram, Sita and Lakshman on the show with the makers. A complete generation went back into time and re-lived the greatest epic on television (called Doordarshan).

Until then, no one knew that the population would suddenly switch channels and make Doordarshan their favourite all over again with Ramayana rebroadcast on Dd National from...

Disney, proving that they’re an ever-moving machine that doesn’t stop to take a break, has announced their new project. Out of Disney India is coming the two-part live-action version of the beloved story of the mythological epic The Mahabharata. The story of warring clans has gone through innumerable adaptations since its inception in 400Bc, but none have quite made it to such a grand scale as the one proposed by Disney. Directed by Abhishek Kapoor (Rock On, Kai Po Che) and written by Ashok Banker (best known for an eight-part novelization of another massive Indian epic The Ramayana), the film has thousands of shoes to fill. There have been films, stage plays and television shows all trying to capture the magic of the classic tale. A television adaptation that ran from 1988-1990 in India was the highest-rated program of the time period. In 1985, the famed British theatre and film director Peter Brook put together a...

From Johnny Cash to Angela Lansbury, expect to see some familiar faces in the coming year

Pop

The lost Johnny Cash gets released

According to Cash's son John, the country legend was a prolific hoarder, hanging on to everything from original audio tapes for The Johnny Cash Show to "a camel saddle gift from the prince of Saudi Arabia". That explains why it's taken several years since his death in 2003 for anyone to find Out Among the Stars, an album he recorded in the early 1980s. Columbia dismissed the album as not worth releasing, but John Cash describes the 12 tracks – which include a duet with Johnny's wife, June Carter – as "beautiful". 24 March.

Theatre

Hairspray

Barely has the set for a blistering revival of Chicago been cleared away than director Paul Kerryson sets about reinventing this joyous musical, inspired by John Waters's cult movie. It's a show that mixes the heart-rending and the hair-curling,...

Legendary French writer Jean-Claude Carrière has crafted strange, wonderful films with directors from Buñuel to Godard. He talks here about the art of creating cinematic enigmas

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Jean-Claude Carrière welcomes me into the former gaming house and den of iniquity that he has called home for nearly half his 80 years; the 19th-century building stands in a sun-dappled Parisian courtyard. It's a glorious afternoon, and I apologise for being so demonstrably English in remarking on that fact, but the legendary screenwriter – tall, with salt-and-pepper stubble and warm, alert eyes – waves away my words. "Why shouldn't we discuss it?" he chuckles. "At least everyone can agree on the weather." Imagine the sense of social rupture if they didn't. "I have a little of that," he confesses, settling into an armchair in a high-ceilinged living room where wooden sculptures stand guard over Persian rugs. "Coming from...

Mahabharata, is an epic that forms the part of rich culture, tradition and history of India. It is one of the greatest literatures of the world which is brought to life in an elaborate production from acclaimed theater and film innovator Peter Brook.

Shemaroo Entertainment releases ‘Peter Brook’s The Mahabharata’ in Hindi on DVDs. It was actually a 9hr- stage play termed as performing art which got which got reduced to 6hrs for DVD release. Brook and award-winning writer Jean-Claude Carriere worked for eight years to develop this epic concerning two sides of a royal family, the Pandavas and t ...

Welcome to No Fact Zone’s weekly roundup of cultural references on The Colbert Report. From Darcy to Danger Mouse, String Theory to Shakespeare, we’ve got the keys to this week’s obscure, oddball, and occasionally obscene cultural shout-outs (hey!)

Nǐ hǎo Zoners! What a week! It’s been a little chilly here in the south, luckily I have a homemade Coma Cozy to keep me warm and sedentary – although it does make typing a little difficult. All of the guests this week were great, but I especially enjoyed Cornel West. He and Stephen have great rapport, and he gave us some great things to think about. The cultural references were also irreverent. In fact, I was going to put in a reference to Ben Wa balls until I was reminded that this is a family friendly blog. So the Black Swan bit is out too. Tell me Zoners,...

'I feel funny about owning art. I don't want to say, "Come and see my Monet – it's in a dark room in the cellar" '

What got you started?

My father made sure that I had lots of levels of education – from ballroom-dancing to painting, commando training, theatre and magic. He was a war photographer in Vietnam, so I also learnt photography from a very young age. Telling stories and putting on shows just came naturally.

What was your big breakthrough?

Meeting Jim Sharman, who created The Rocky Horror Picture Show, at the National Institute of Dramatic Art in Sydney. He started telling everyone: "I think this young chap's got something." Soon I was directing a series of Strindberg and Brecht, and devising a play set in the world of ballroom dancing that became Strictly Ballroom. Sharman ensured I was busy, and I've been busy ever since.

What's the best...

Acclaimed Malian actor Sotigui Kouyate has passed away at the age of 74.

The former soccer star died on Saturday in Paris, France.

The son of director Dani Kouyate, Sotigui started out as a promising soccer player for the Burkina Faso national team.

He soon moved into acting and began his theatre career in 1966, before going on to establish his own stage company.

Kouyate was a longtime collaborator of British film and theatre director Peter Brook, and the pair worked together on the Indian epic The Mahabharata in 1983.

But it wasn't until 2009 that Kouyate gained more international acclaim with his portrayal of a French Muslim waiting for news of his son in the immediate aftermath of the 7/7 bombings on the London transport system in the movie London River.

The role won him the Best Actor title at last year's Berlin Film Festival in Germany and he was also awarded the French government's highest cultural honour at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, when he was made an officer of arts and letters.

The cause of death was unknown as WENN went to press.

How does someone show range while keeping each character truthful and believable? Of course that's the ultimate acting question. But to see powerful examples, watch Irish actor Ciarán Hinds in his vast variety of roles. From romantic leads (Captain Wentworth in 1995's "Persuasion" and Mr. Rochester in 1997's "Jane Eyre") to empire-builders (Gaius Julius Caesar in BBC/HBO's series "Rome"), from murderers (Jim Browner in "The Cardboard Box") to cartoon character (Botticelli the rat in "The Tale of Despereaux"), from working with Paul Thomas Anderson ("There Will Be Blood") to an upcoming "Harry Potter" film—there's no doubt he can do it all, while remaining true to each character's nature and each project's style. And that's just screen projects. He was cast by Peter Brook in the six-hour theatre piece "The Mahabharata," then joined the Royal Shakespeare Company, performing the title role in Sam Mendes' "Richard III." Hinds also...