Shabana Azmi has long been the glory and pride of Indian cinema. Back in 1974, the classic of modern Indian cinema Satyanjit Rey predicted a great cinematic future for her, calling her one of the most magnificent dramatic actresses. And when two years later, the director began staging Chess Players, his first Hindi film, he invited Shabana to the lead female role. Shabana owes much to Shyam Bengal. 22-year-old student of the acting faculty of the film Institute in Pune, she debuted in his first
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Shabana Azmi has long been the glory and pride of Indian cinema. Back in 1974, the classic of modern Indian cinema Satyanjit Rey predicted a great cinematic future for her, calling her one of the most magnificent dramatic actresses. And when two years later, the director began staging Chess Players, his first Hindi film, he invited Shabana to the lead female role.
Shabana owes much to Shyam Bengal. 22-year-old student of the acting faculty of the film Institute in Pune, she debuted in his first film “Growth”. Then the director assigned her a very difficult role as the wife of a village teacher in the film “The End of the Night”. Subsequently, Shabana played the episodic role of the unsociable childless wife of Pathana Javed Khan in the historical film “Madness”, starred as the prudent hostess of the house of entertainment in the film “Market Square” (I have already written about him, I want to draw your attention to this film once again). Shabana Azmi is a three-time winner of national film festivals. She was the best actress of 1974 for her role in the movie “Growth”. Then, two years in a row (in 1983 and 1984), Shabana was awarded the same title for her “emotionally restrained but psychologically convincing performance” in the films Awareness (directed by Mahesh Bhatt) and Ruins (directed by Mrinal Sen).
Shabana Azmi was born in the family of the former president of the Association of People's Theatres of India (IPTA), the famous poet and playwright Keifi Azmi (in Russian his individual poems and poems have been translated). He is also the author of nearly 250 songs for movies. Her mother, Shaukat Azmi, a theater actress, was working on the stage of the Prithviraj Theatre, father of Raj and Shashi Kapoor. When the girl was 3 years old, she was assigned to a private school. Shabana studied well, performed in school plays. After graduating from college, where she continued to play in amateur theater, was going to go to Delhi to study at the National School of Drama, but then changed her mind and entered the acting faculty of the Film Institute in Pune, where you could get an art education, master the skills of acting technique. Shabana, she said, never really thought about working in a movie. Maybe it is. In any case, on stage, he felt more at ease and confident than in front of the camera. Now Shabana is a little distant from the cinema and engaged in politics. She participates in charity events, collecting donations for the poor. Her social life is in the first place, and personal remains unfinished - Shabana has no children, she lives with her husband Javid for more than 10 years, but she does not think about the child yet. Shabana explains this by the fact that in her youth she did not want to undergo a tedious procedure of treatment and is now deprived of the opportunity to give birth to a full-fledged child, but she is already 47 years old. . .
Returning to her creative career, I want to say that Shabana Azmi has become a wide-profile actress: she plays on the theater stage, starred in films by Shyam Bengal and directors of creative “intellectual cinema”, which include Mrinal Sen, Said Akhtar Mirza, Gautam Ghosh and others. Shabana starred with Amitabh Bachchan in the film My Name is Azad (directed by Tina Anand). In “Sati”, a film directed by Oporna Shen (her previous film “Poroma” was shown on our screens), she plays a deaf-mute girl who tragically developed a life destiny.
Shabana Azmi’s fame has long gone beyond India. She starred in the director Mrinal Sena in the Franco-Indian-Belgian film “Genesis”, played a cameo role in the French film “Bengal Night”. Shabana starred in Hollywood - in the film "Madame Sujatska" she plays with Shirley MacLaine. She worked with Patrick Swise in The City of Joy, where she had a small role and James Wilby in The Immaculate Conception. She was also invited to star in a BBC Channel Four television film as Pakistan’s prominent public and political figure Benazir Bhutto. Undoubtedly, Shabana Azmi is an actress of wide range. She is equally successful in both creative and commercial cinema. It will be a pity if Shabana leaves the screen and engages in social activities, it is of course good on the one hand, but on the other - we will lose a very talented actress.
