Cinema
Shyamchi Aai
श्यामची आई
P. K. Atre · 1953
Synopsis
Imprisoned for his nationalist commitment, Sane Guruji tells his fellow prisoners about the childhood of Shyam, son of a family of landowners in the Konkan. Debts pile up, the family falls on hard times and has to make do with a more modest life; the father wears himself out with work, relatives prove ungrateful and a moneylender presses him. The mother, deeply devout and of a quite simple wisdom, teaches the child to hold to his ideals despite poverty, and the film follows, episode after episode, the mark she leaves on him.
Context
The film adapts the book that Sane Guruji, a nationalist activist imprisoned several times, wrote in five days, from 9 to 13 February 1933, in Nashik prison, and which was published in 1935. Atre produced it, wrote the screenplay and directed it; Vanamala plays the mother, Madhav Vaze the child, Damuanna Joshi the narrator. The music is by Vasant Desai. Volunteers still screen it in schools in Maharashtra.
Who it is for
Two and a half hours in Marathi, with no French release; a melodrama with an explicit moral, which also addresses children.
Prizes and reception
First President's Gold Medal in the very first national awards of Indian cinema, in 1954; a landmark of Marathi melodrama.
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