Tapan Sinha to be conferred with 'Asain Film Culture Award'

Mumbai, Nov 3 (UNI) The Third Eye 6th Asian Film Festival will confer the ''Asian Film Culture Award'' on 84-year-old Tapan Sinha, veteran Bengali film director.

Mr Sinha has won 19 National Awards in different categories of cinema in his career.

The award that is presented each year to the masters of Asian cinema, one year to Indian director and another year to Asian director, has seen past recipients like Majid Majidi (2006) from Iran, Adoor Gopalakrishnan (2005) from India, Mrinal Sen (2003) from India and Lester James Peries (2002) from Sri Lanka.

According to experts, ''Tapan Sinha started his illustrous career 50 years back as a sound recordist. He later went to London and joined Pinewood Studio to study cinema technique under great Europeon masters. Even though he became director in 1954 with Ankush, he left an indeliable print on Indian cinema with Kabuliwala that was based on a Rabindranath Tagore story. The film won the Silver Bear award for outstanding music.'' He made two other films based on Tagore's stories, ''Hungry Stones'' and ''The Runaway''. His select filmography includes ''Daughters of this Century'' (1996), ''Hate Bazare'' (1967), ''Aadmi aur Aurat'' (1984), ''Zindagi Zindagi'' (1972) to name a few.

His films are regarded as the most important examples of cinematic adaptations of novels by major Bengali writers such as Tarashankar Bandopadhyay and Sunil Gangopadhyay.

He has won accolades at various international film festivals like Berlin, Venice, London and others and has also served as jury member in Tashkent and San Francisco film festivals.

Mr Sinha sums up his illustrous career as ''A long journey in search of art, truth and beauty.'' The ongoing Asian Film Festival will showcase a retrospective of his works. Tapan Sinha's outstanding masterpieces, comprising more than 40 feature films in Bengali and Hindi spanning more than five decades, permanently established his place in the history of world cinema.

UNI