MIRROR OF ILLUSION

Kumar Shahani

India

- 1972

Taran is the daughter of a wealthy landlord and lives with her father and her widowed aunt in their ancestral mansion after India’s independence in 1947. The town is witnessing protests by newly formed labour unions which are partly being politically educated by the local railroad engineer, who seems to have an unspoken romantic relationship with Taran. Taran’s unseen brother, who had, to the chagrin of their father, renounced his class privileges and gone off to an Assamese tea estate, asks Taran to join him.

Kumar Shahani

Director born in Larkana, Sind (now Pakistan) in 1940. He graduated from the University of Bombay (1962) and from the FTII (1966) and completed further film studies in France (1967-68), where he assisted Bresson on ‘Une femme douce’ (1969). After the intense and innovative ‘Mirror of Illusion’ (1972), he obtained no support from the NFDC for 12 years. His early work is contextualised by the political events of the 60s and 70s and the definitive shifts in the Nehruite nationalist model caused by the Indira Gandhi regime. His filmography includes films like ‘Tarang’ (1984), ‘Khayal Gatha’ (1989), ‘Kasb’a (1991), ‘Bhavantarana’ (1991), ‘Char Adhyay’ (1997) and ‘Birah Bhariyo Ghar Aangan Kone’ (2000).