Kumar Shahani

Who is Kumar Shahani?

Kumar Shahani is a noted Indian Film director, born in Larkana, Sindh, on 7 December 1940. After the Partition of India his family shifted to the city of Bombay. He received a BA from the University of Bombay in Political Science and History and studied Screenplay Writing and Advanced Direction at the Film and Television Institute of India, where he was a student of Ritwik Ghatak. He also studied under the renowned Marxist historian D. D. Kosambi. He was awarded a French Government Scholarship for further studies in France, where he studied at the Institut des hautes études cinématographiques and assisted Robert Bresson on Une Femme Douce. He returned to India to make his first feature film Maya Darpan in 1972 and had to wait twelve years before he received funding to make his next full length feature film, Tarang.

From 1976-1978 he held a Homi Bhabha Fellowship to study the epic tradition of the Mahābhārata, Buddhist iconography, Indian classical music and the Bhakti movement.