Yeh Gul(zar)istan Hamara, Films of Gulzar Options

[swarapriya]

Yeh Gul(zar)istan Hamara - Films of Gulzar

Sampooran Singh Karla, popularly known as Gulzar, has been active for 50 years in the film industry. At age 73, after winning an Oscar in 2009 he seems to be going from strength to strength and hardly shows any signs of slowing down.

Originally a car mechanic, Karla always wanted to be a writer. He took the penname of Gulzar Deenvi and started writing. His first opportunity to write for films came in 1960.

He entered into the movies as an assistant director and song writer for the film “Shreeman Satyawadi”. After that ambitious start, he has been involved in writing dialogues, lyrics, stories, screenplays, producing, and directing movies for all these years.

During his brilliant career he garnered several awards. Aside for the Oscar for “Slumdog Millionaire” for the song “Jai Ho”, he also won a Grammy for the same song. He won the best lyricist Filmfare award a record 11 times. He also won the Filmfare award as the best dialogue writer four times, best story once, and best director once. He won seven National film awards in various categories. He is a recipient of Sahitya Akademi Award and the Padma Bhushan.

During his illustrious career Gulzar collaborated with various artistes, including Asha Bhosle, Bhupinder Singh, Ghulam Ali, Jagjit Singh, and R.D. Burman, and came out with several private albums. He invented a new technique of writing poetry called “Triveni” that contains each stanza as rhyming three lines. The album with Jagjit Singh, “Koi Baat Chale”, was written completely using this technique.

He also made his presence felt on TV by making a series on the life of “Ghalib”. He wrote songs for many children movies for TV. He directed 21 movies and was involved in some capacity or other in over 140 movies. In the next few weeks, I would like to share songs from the films he was associated with.

For showing continued brilliance for 50 or so years one cannot help but be in just awe of his unending creative juices. All one can say about him and his magnificently illustrious career, borrowing from his now world famous song, “Jai Ho!” …

This post has been edited by swarapriya: Mar 5 2010, 02:51 AM

[swarapriya]

Bawarchi (1972)

Here is another little "big" offering from Hrishida. Hrishida wrote the screenplay for this film from Tapan Sinha's story as well as directed it. Gulzarji wrote the witty dialogues that makes this movie a comedy that is a must watch.

Interestingly there were no title credits shown for the film but Amitabh gives them orally. (In the recent film "Paa (2009)", Jaya Bhaduri almost uses a similar technique to give the movie's credits.) Amitabh also provides the commentary in the background.

Rajesh, who was riding the height of popularity during these years of his super stardom, lives in the role of "Bawarchi" by making it at once as one of his endearingly unforgettable and sweet character roles he played.

The movie also boasts some beautiful music by Madan Mohanji. I have two favorite songs from this album. One of them is Lata's "More Naina Bahaayen Neer". The other one is by Manna Dey. Mannada who sang the song "Kaun Aaya Mere Mann Ke Dwaare" for Madan Saab in "Dekh Kabira Roya" in 1957, is here again delivering another classic song in "Tum Bin Jeevan Kaisa Jeevan". An unforgettable song only Mannada could sing ...

Now for the details of the songs and the songs themselves ...