Aparna Sen (née Dasgupta) (Bengali: অপর্ণা সেন Ôporna Shen; born 25 October 1945) is a critically acclaimed Bengali Indian filmmaker, script writer, and actress. She is the winner of three National Film Awards and eight international film festival awards.
Aparna Sen was born in Calcutta to a Bengali family, originally from East Bengal (now Bangladesh). Her father is the veteran critic and filmmaker Chidananda Dasgupta. Her mother Supriya Dasgupta is the cousin of renowned Bengali poet Jibanananda Das. She spent her childhood in Hazaribagh and Kolkata and had her schooling initially in South Point and later mostly in Loreto Convent, Kolkata.
She studied her B.A. English honors in Presidency College.
She met the Magnum photographer, Brian Brake,
in Kolkata in 1961 when he was visiting India to photograph his Monsoon
series. Brake used Sen as the model for what was to become one of his
most well known photographs — a shot of a girl holding her face to the
first drops of monsoon rain. The photo shoot was set up on a Kolkata
rooftop with a ladder and a watering can. Sen described the shoot:
He took me up to the terrace, had me wear a red sari in the way a village girl does, and asked me to wear a green stud in my nose. To be helpful, I said let me wear a red one to match, and he said no — he was so decisive, rather brusque — I think a green one. It was stuck to my nose with glue, because my nose wasn't pierced. Someone had a large watering can, and they poured water over me. It was really a very simple affair. It took maybe half an hour.
Sen made her film debut at the age of 16, when she played the role of Mrinmoyee in the Samapti portion of the 1961 film Teen Kanya (Three Daughters) directed by Satyajit Ray (who was a longtime friend of her father's). She then studied at Kolkata's Presidency College.
Later in life she would work with Satyajit Ray in several of his films, including the short Pikoo (1981) where she played the role of an adulterous wife and mother.
In 1965, Sen resumed her film career in Mrinal Sen's Akash Kusum, which was later remade into a Hindi film Manzil starring Amitabh Bachchan and Moushumi Chatterjee. Later she also brought out the different nuances of a widow in Mrinal Sen's Mahaprithibi.
From then until the end of the 1970s, she worked steadily in the
Bengali film industry, as a leading heroine of the time. She acted in a
number of Hindi films as well during this time, including Imaan Dharam
(1977) with Bachchan, Shashi Kapoor, Sanjeev Kumar and Rekha. Sen was
equally successful in mainstream Bengali films. Her chemistry with Soumitra Chatterjee in films such as Basanta Bilap, Baksa Badal and Chutir Fande was loved as much as her work with Uttam Kumar in films like Joy Jayanti and Alor Thikana.
In 1969, Sen appeared in The Guru, an English-language feature by Merchant Ivory Productions. She would make two more films with Merchant-Ivory, Bombay Talkie (1970), and Hullabaloo Over Georgie and Bonnie's Pictures (1978).
In 2009, Sen appeared with Sharmila Tagore and Rahul Bose in Annirudh Roy-Chowdhary's Bengali film Antaheen. The film went on to win four National Film Awards.
In 1981, Sen made her debut as a film director with 36 Chowringhee Lane. She also wrote its screenplay. The film, about an aged Anglo-Indian teacher living in Calcutta, won positive reviews from critics. For her debut feature, Sen won the Best Director award at the Indian National Film Awards. 36 Chowringhee Lane also won the Grand Prix (the Golden Eagle) at the Manila International Film Festival.She followed up this early success with several other films, notably Paroma (1984), Sati (1989) and Yugant (1995). These examined the feminine condition in modern-day India from different perspectives. She also starred in Unishe April (1994), the film by Bengali cinema's Rituparno Ghosh.
Sen's next directorial effort Paromitar Ek Din (2000) was a critical hit and recalled the success of her first film. The film explored the relationship between a divorced woman (Rituparna Sengupta) and her mother-in-law, played by Sen herself. It won a number of awards on the international festival circuit.
Mr. and Mrs. Iyer (2002) was a love story set against the harsh backdrop of Hindu-Muslim sectarian violence in India. The film won a National Film Award for Sen's direction, and an acting award for Konkona Sen Sharma, the director's daughter. The film won more awards at the Locarno, Hawaii and Manila film festivals.
15, Park Avenue (2005) starred her daughter and the actors Shabana Azmi, Dhritiman Chaterji, Waheeda Rehman, Rahul Bose and Soumitra Chatterjee. The film deals with a girl (Konkona Sen Sharma) who is a schizophrenic and her relations with her elder stepsister, played by Shabana Azmi.
Her next film, The Japanese Wife (2010), starred Raima Sen, Rahul Bose and Chigusa Takaku. This film focuses on two women and is based on a short story by West Bengal author Kunal Basu.
Aparna has made selective films and in the last three decades of her career, she has made only nine films.
In 2009, Sen announced her next Bengali film Iti Mrinalini, which starred Konkona Sen Sharma, Aparna Sen, Rajat Kapoor, Kaushik Sen, and Priyanshu Chatterjee. Sen's last Bengali film was Paromitar Ek Din (2000). First-time screenwriter Ranjan Ghosh co-authored Iti Mrinalini.
This was the first time that Sen collaborated with any film writer or
became attached to the curriculum of a film institute. The screenplay of
Iti Mrinalini was an assignment in the Screenwriting syllabus at the Mumbai-based film school Whistling Woods International.
It was also a major first in Indian screenwriting, as the first time
that any screenplay from an Indian film institute was actually filmed. The film was released on July 29, 2011.
Sen has been married three times. Her first marriage, to Sanjay Sen, was when she was quite young. Her second husband was the science writer and journalist, Mukul Sharma. They later divorced amicably. Sen is presently married to Kalyan Ray, an author and professor of English who teaches at County College of Morris in Randolph, New Jersey, in the United States. She has two daughters, Kamalini and Konkona—who is also an actress—and two grandchildren zakir and haroon.
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