Remembering legendary director Bimal Roy 1909-66

Source:wikipedia
Bimal Roy(12 July 1909 – 8 January 1966) is particularly noted for his realistic and socialistic films such as Do Bigha Zamin, Parineeta, Biraj Bahu, Madhumati, Sujata, and Bandini, making him an important director of Hindi cinema. Inspired by Italian neo-realistic cinema, he made Do Bigha Zamin after watching Vittorio De Sica's Bicycle Thieves(1948).
He won a number of awards throughout his career, including eleven Filmfare Awards, two National Film Awards, and the International Prize of the Cannes Film Festival. Madhumati won 9 Filmfare Awards in 1958, a record held for 37 years.

Bimal Roy was born on 12 July 1909, to a zamindar family in Suapur, Dhaka then part of the Eastern Bengal and Assam province of British India and now part of Bangladesh. Bimal Roy moved to Calcutta and entered the field of cinema as a camera assistant with New Theatres Pvt. Ltd.. During this time, he assisted director P.C. Barua as Publicity Photographer, on the hit 1935 film Devdas, starring K.L. Saigal. In the 1940s and 1950s Roy was part of the parallel cinema movement in post-war India. He collaborated on Anjangarh (1948), one of the last major films of the New Theatres, however, the Kolkata-based film industry was now on the decline, thus Roy shifted his base to Bombay (now Mumbai), along with his team in 1950, which included Hrishikesh Mukherjee (editor), Nabendu Ghosh (screenwriter), Asit Sen (assistant director), Kamal Bose (cinematographer) and later, Salil Chaudhury (music director), and by 1952 he had restarted the second phase of his career with Maa (1952), for Bombay Talkies. He was famous for his romantic-realist melodramas that took on important social issues while still being entertaining. He was a filmmaker of great and in-depth understanding of human strengths and weaknesses. In 1959, he was a member of the jury at the 1st Moscow International Film Festival.
He died of cancer on 8 January 1966 at the age of 56. Awards[edit]
Bimal Roy usually alternated between music directors Salil Chowdhury and S.D. Burman. His films featured beautiful and memorable songs, rendered by all the top playback singers of the day.
Bimal Roy's influence was far-reaching, both in Indian cinema and world cinema. In Indian cinema, his influence extended to both mainstream commercial Hindi cinema and the emerging Parallel Cinema. His film Do Bigha Zamin (1953) was the first film to successfully straddle art and commercial cinema. It was a commercial and critical success, winning the International Prize at the 1954 Cannes Film Festival. As a result, the film's success paved the way for the Indian New Wave.
In commercial cinema, the most influential film he directed was perhaps Madhumati (1958), his first and only collaboration with Ritwik Ghatak , and one of the earliest films to deal with reincarnation. It is believed to have been the source of inspiration for many later works dealing with the theme of reincarnation in Indian cinema, Indian television, and perhaps world cinema.
The Bimal Roy Memorial Trophy has been awarded every year since 1997, and a postage stamp, bearing his face, was released by India Post to honour him on 8 January 2007.