A CINEMATIC RECALL

An excerpt from Anirudha Bhattacharjee's anecdotal biography of Basu Chatterji, the filmmaker who founded the middle-of-theroad genre in Indian cinema, an auteur of the common man

The National Award

The date 31 December is of major significance for cinema in India. Unless cleared by the censor board by that date, a film is not considered by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting for the National Awards for that year. Sara Aakash received its certificate on 31 December surely with the National Award in mind. As would N.C. Sippy and Hrishikesh Mukherjee hurry to get Anand certified on 31 December 1970 a year later. Apart from the prestige factor, National Awards added to the commercial clout of the film and also helped in getting it selected for exhibition in festivals in India and abroad.

Unfortunately, unlike Bhuvan Shome, Sara Aakash, in the absence of abstract elements and compounded by the failure to get a distributor for over a year, did not catch the eye of the literati then. Reviews were rare. Applause, if any, remained confined to the select few who managed the see the film with great difficulty in some small auditorium. Press conferences were limited, though Basu had arranged one in a well-known hotel then (as per Nandita Thakur, at the Taj Intercontinental, now the Taj Mahal Tower), after which one review by Mohan S. Bawa published in the Sunday Standard on 27 September 1970 said: