Celebrating Mrinal Sen: Doordarshan's Mini Series

The DVD of this documentary was handed over to Shri Mrinal Sen and his wife, Smt. Gita Sen, by the Chief Executive Officer of Prasar Bharati, Shri Jawhar Sircar, at a befitting programme, which took place this evening at the Sens’ residence in South Kolkata.

Spread over four episodes, the archival documentary is primarily based on conversations between the maestro and the renowned film critic and analyst, Sameek Bandyopadhyay.

The conversation is interspersed with relevant excerpts from his brilliant and memorable films and comments from his actors and associate crew members, who worked with him in his different projects.

The last episode is a free flowing conversation between  Sen’s only son, Kunal, and his parents. Almost all the living actors, who have been associated with this iconic director, have talked about Mrinal Sen, the man and their personal experiences of working and interacting with him.

Sen has also been an active film buff and most interested in the work of some of the younger film directors. They have also expressed their views on this grand ‘young’ man of cinema.

Jawhar Sircar, immediately after taking over as the C.E.O. of Prasar Bharati, the controlling body of the world’s largest TV Network, Doordarshan, initiated the possibility to document the vast experience of this legendary film personality. This prestigious project was assigned to one of the senior programme officers of Doordarshan Directorate at New Delhi, Ms. Ananya Banerjee, who produced the mini-series on the basis of a series of conversations with Shri Sen in early 2013. The project was given its final shape with several inputs during post production spread over one and half years.

The mini-series will be telecast across different channels of Doordarshan like DD National, DD Bangla, DD Bharati and others, with suitable dubbing and subtitling in different languages from English.