{"id":68686,"date":"2025-01-02T02:32:51","date_gmt":"2025-01-01T17:32:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/film\/2025\/jan\/01\/shyam-benegal-obituary"},"modified":"2025-01-02T02:32:51","modified_gmt":"2025-01-01T17:32:51","slug":"shyam-benegal-obituary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=68686","title":{"rendered":"Shyam Benegal obituary"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Pioneering director with a vital role in India\u2019s \u2018parallel cinema\u2019 movement who used his films to explore difficult issues<\/p>\n<p>The Indian film-maker Shyam Benegal, who has died aged 90, was a pillar of the \u201cparallel cinema\u201d movement, the informal grouping of independently minded and funded creatives whose work stood in stark, socially committed contrast to the song-and-dance escapism of Bollywood.<\/p>\n<p>Responding to real events and centred on marginalised characters (often women), Benegal\u2019s breakthrough films of the 1970s rejected the cosmetic, crowd-pleasing approach of the Hindi mainstream. Yet they found an appreciative audience both at home and abroad, helping to make household names of such performers as Shabana Azmi, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/film\/2017\/jan\/06\/om-puri-obituary\">Om Puri<\/a> and Naseeruddin Shah.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/film\/2025\/jan\/01\/shyam-benegal-obituary\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Pioneering director with a vital role in India\u2019s \u2018parallel cinema\u2019 movement who used his films to explore difficult issuesThe Indian film-maker Shyam Benegal, who has died aged 90, was a pillar of the \u201cparallel cinema\u201d movement, the informal grouping o&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":539,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[435,71,1580,707,69,62,61,520,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-68686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-advertising","category-culture","category-documentary","category-documentary-films","category-film","category-india","category-south-and-central-asia","category-television","category-world-news"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/539"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=68686"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68686\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":68688,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68686\/revisions\/68688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=68686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=68686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=68686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}