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23-749: Dev Benegal is an Indian filmmaker and screenwriter, most known for his debut film English, August (1994), which won the Best Feature Film in English at the 42nd National Film Awards . Dev was born in New Delhi to Som Benegal, a theatre director, and his wife Suman. Dev Benegal grew up in New Delhi. In 1979, he left Delhi for Mumbai (then Bombay), to pursue a career in movies. He won an Asian Cultural Council grant in Film, Video & Photography to study Film History in

46-628: A New Life (1992). In 1994 he wrote and directed his adaptation of Upamanyu Chatterjee 's 1989 novel by the same name , based on the Indian Administrative Service , English, August (1994). The film received praise from critics for its modern and urban themes and was hailed as the cinematic counterpart to the later Anglo-Indian literary movement . It also won the Best Feature Film in English Award at National Film Awards , and

69-426: A debutant the director's work passes muster". The original soundtrack for the film is composed by D. Wood and consists of the following instrumental tracks. Hong Kong International Film Festival HKIFF screens around 230 films from more than 60 countries in different major cultural venues across the territory every year. New films are featured as gala premieres, with the directors and cast presenting on

92-660: A keen sense of character, place and political reality in the auspicious English, August. "English, August" won the Special Jury Award at the 12th Torino Film Festival 1994. It won both the Silver Montgolfiere (Silver Grand Prix) and the Gilberto Martinez Solares prize for the Best First Film at the 16th Festival des 3 Continents, Nantes France, 1994 Split Wide Open (1999), another Hinglish film,

115-576: A screenwriting master class for their 2020 program. Pritish Nandy while describing Benegal's films, said: "Dev Benegal spearheads the brat pack of movie directors who are all out to prove that indian movies is not all pelvis thrusting and running around trees." An academic paper (Prateek, Prateek. (2013). "Popart": The 'global' avatar of bollywood. 5. 247-257) on Bollywood draws upon insights from his work and describes it as follows: "Benegal's cinematic dialogue with Indianness of English along with Englishness of India, with narratives of belonging, and with

138-911: A year by young Chinese filmmakers that will hold their world premieres at HKIFF. The Seagull ( Il Gabbiano , dir. Marco Bellocchio ) The Uprising (dir. Peter Lilienthal ) Street Music (dir. Jenny Bowen ) Muddy River (dir. Kohei Oguri ) Moonlighting (dir. Jerzy Skolimowski ) Son of the North East (dir. Vichit Kounavudhi ) Carmen (dir. Carlos Saura ) Merry Christmas Mr.Lawrence (dir. Nagisa Oshima ) Paris Texas (dir. Wim Wenders ) Mac Arthurs Children (dir. Masahiro Shinoda ) Ran (dir. Akira Kurosawa ) Insignificance (dir. Nicolas Roeg ) To Sleep So As To Dream (dir. Kaizo Hayashi ) The Sacrifice (dir. Andrei Tarkovsky ) The Stand-in (dir. Huang Jianxin ) Yeelen (dir. Souleymane Cissé ) Goodbye, Children (dir. Louis Malle ) Red Sorghum (dir. Zhang Yimou ) Women on

161-585: Is now hailed as a landmark in contemporary Indian cinema as it ushered in a wave of independent Indian filmmakers, commonly known as "multiplex films" in India. The New York Times wrote: In " English, August ", his first feature film, Mr. Benegal deftly manages the feat of using the scalpel of humor to lay bare a young man's painful but edifying immersion in an alien culture within his own land and to deliver potent sociological and political messages. Irreverent humor, frustrated idealism and earnest compassion are blended with

184-619: Is specifically Indian, yet designed for wider appreciation in festivals and, if all goes well at the European Film Market, in cross-over releases in international territories." His project Bombay Samourai was an official selection for the Hong Kong Asia Film Finance Forum (HAF) at the HongKong International Film Festival. This film is in development. Dev Benegal is also developing a film on

207-456: The red carpet and meet-and-greet sessions in theatres. Previously operated by Urban Council and Leisure and Cultural Services Department , from 1977 to 2001, and Hong Kong Arts Development Council , from 2002 to 2004, HKIFF was officially incorporated as an independent, charitable organisation – Hong Kong International Film Festival Society Limited after completing its 28th edition. The Hong Kong SAR Government has continued to subsidise

230-453: The COVID-19 pandemic. Agastya Sen ( Rahul Bose ), nicknamed "English, August", speaks and thinks in English. A lover of poetry, he listens to Bob Dylan , Miles Davis , rock and jazz and reads Marcus Aurelius . He is also an Indian Administrative Service Officer, a member of the most influential and powerful cadre of civil servants in India. He is sent off for a year's training to Madna,

253-713: The Cinema Studies Program at New York University from 1989–90. He began his career with legendary animator Ram Mohan and got his first job with Shashi Kapoor 's Filmvalas. After assisting Shyam Benegal in films like Kalyug (1980), Mandi (1983) and his famous documentary on Satyajit Ray — Satyajit Ray, Filmmaker (1984)—Dev Benegal directed a series of short short films, Kalpavriksha: The Tree of Life (1988), Kanakambaram: Cloth: of Gold (1987), and Anantarupam: The Infinite Forms (1987). He directed several documentaries, including Shabana! (2003) with Indian film star Shabana Azmi and Abhivardhan: Building for

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276-735: The Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (dir. Pedro Almodovar ) Pellethe Conqueror (dir. Bille August ) Theo Angelopoulos Fumio Kamei Vasily Shukshin Idrissa Ouédraogo High Heels (dir. Pedro Almodovar ) Opening Night (dir. John Cassavetes ) Summer Snow (dir. Ann Hui ) Burnt by the Sun (dir. Nikita Mikhalkov ) From Dusk Till Dawn (dir. Robert Rodriguez ) Mahjong (dir. Edward Yang ) The River (dir. Tsai Ming-liang ) Dragon Inn (dir. King Hu ) Tony Gatlif Where

299-463: The compacted heterogeneity of urban-industrial India, established in his early cinema... Benegal understands the gravity of the national metaphor of 'unity in diversity', and tries to manifest it in the polyphony of various languages and different dialects – English, Hindi, and Telugu. Equally important are his 'artistic' story-telling skills, a trait usually found in the art cinema: the capacity to create credible characters (human or otherwise, like Dadru,

322-418: The festival through venue provision and partial funding. Since 2012, HKIFF produced and premiered anthologies of short films made by well-known award winning filmmakers from Asia, such as Ann Hui , Kiyoshi Kurosawa , Jia Zhangke , Brillante Mendoza , Hideo Nakata , Tsai Ming-liang , and Apichatpong Weerasethakul . Since 2017, HKIFF started to collaborate with Heyi Pictures to produce two feature films

345-532: The film were spoiled due to flooding at a storage facility of Prasad Studios . There was an unsuccessful attempt at restoration , following which the film was declared a lost film . In February 2020, a copy of the film was found in the National Film Archives of India. Since the film reel is a 35 mm print, the restoration process has begun. However, restoration was brought to a halt in March 2020 due to

368-458: The first Indian independent film to break the stranglehold of mainstream Indian Bollywood cinema when it was acquired by 20th Century Fox and became a theatrical success in the country. This has led the way for other low budget, independent movies such as Bombay Boys and Split Wide Open , which are part of the next generation of "middle cinema". The film is based on the novel of the same name by Upamanyu Chatterjee . The negatives of

391-494: The frog) and cultures, skilful scene-setting, mastery of pace and timing, and power of imagination." English, August (film) English, August is a 1994 Indian English-language black comedy film and director Dev Benegal 's first feature film. A humorous and irreverent study of bureaucracy and the Indian Generation X , English, August won several awards at international film festivals. English, August became

414-517: The hottest town in the country. Culture shock and a language barrier in his own country follows (August's mother tongue is Bengali ). He feels like a foreigner, but must survive. Moreover, August is surrounded by wild characters: Srivastava, the pompous head bureaucrat and his wife Malti, the fashion and cultural leader of the town; Sathe, a local pothead and cartoonist; Kumar, the Police Superintendent and connoisseur of porn films; and Vasant,

437-429: The lead, premiered at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival . In its review, The Hollywood Reporter wrote: "Dev Benegal's 'Road, Movie' takes you on a magical mystery tour into the heart of India and its robust cinema. It is, in fact, a road movie without the comma, but it is also about being on the road in a vast Indian landscape and about the phenomenon of touring cinemas that still exist in rural India. The film

460-468: The life of mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan . In 2006, Benegal started a production program called 24×7 Making Movies, where he invited young people from all over India to come and make a film in 24 hours. The program has produced over 60 short feature films. Benegal is a long time advisor to eQuinoxe Screenwriting Workshops for Professionals. He has been invited by Under The Volcano, the international program of writing master classes to create and conduct

483-470: The world's worst cook. August negotiates this provincial creek with the only paddle he can find; Fantasy, daydreams and "self-abuse" become his means of revolt and escape as he escapes from the heat into the mystery and quiet of his secret world of erotic fantasy and contemplation. Reviewing the film at the International Film Festival of India, S. R. Ashok Kumar of The Hindu wrote that "For

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506-424: Was also a critical success and won a Special Jury Prize at the 2000 Singapore International Film Festival . Writing for The Hindu , Savitha Padmanabhan said: " Split Wide Open is a bold and strong statement on the filth and lawlessness that have wormed their way into the city of dreams, Mumbai". In an article for The Times of India , the film's lead actor Rahul Bose wrote: "Critics flayed me: After Split Wide Open

529-648: Was released, critics ripped apart my character. To be an English-speaking slum-dweller who is also a smuggler, I spent a month in slums and even shadowed a cocaine-dealer for two weeks. Ironically, the criticism at home turned into praise when I won the Best Actor award for Split Wide Open at the Singapore Film Festival." Benegal's latest film, Road, Movie (2009), about a travelling cinema troupe in Rajasthan, and starring Abhay Deol and Tannishtha Chatterjee as

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