 Over a hundred years of Indian cinema, we have seen an emergence of a wide range of filmmakers from commercial money-spinners to artistic maestros. But there have been few who have been able to challenge the very language and dialectics in which films are made and what they say. For Renal Sen, the most important purpose of cinema is political commentary and documentation. Forming and then developing a cinematic style for him is the means to express ideas effectively through a medium of popular culture that connects with the people he is speaking to. Not only did his films break off from mainstream Indian cinema at the time, taking a critical look at many aspects of Indian society, but they were also avant-garde in their presentation in cinematic language. The Calcutta trilogy, as it is now called, is a combination of three films made by Sen between 1970 and 1973. Interview, Calcutta 71, and then Pothetic. During this time, the city was brought to a standstill by the far left radical communist movement known as the Nuxulite Movement. And these films reflect Sen's politics explicitly. They follow a cerebral train of thought that first identifies the problems of an independent India and then explains why these problems have continued endlessly post-independence. I am not ashamed of being a pamphleteer if it makes a point. That was the time when there was a lot of unrest in Calcutta. And I cannot just pull myself out of the atmosphere in which I grow, in which I weep, in which I get angry. So all that I did at that time, I wanted to point my accusing finger at the enemy outside. That was when I brought the physical reality very close to me. I used to bring the physical reality onto the screen. The reasons for Menal Sen's natural alignment with the leftist movement in Bengal lie in his own roots in East Bengal, his migration to Calcutta, and of course the Bengal famine of 1943. He understood how a colonial administration that was at war with Japan created and then neglected a famine that eventually killed some 3 million people. Menal Sen is interested in the effect this disaster had on ordinary lives and as an observer in Baish-e-Shawar. Made in the backdrop of the famine during World War II, the film shows how economic and social conditions caused the emotional and psychological destruction of two lives. Sen has said that this was a cruel time and that he wanted to make a cruel film on the time. In Okkalaer Shandane, Sen's outrage, the understanding that the famine need never have happened, is channeled in a very creative manner. It is perhaps his best-written film about a movie crew that comes to a village in 1980 to make a movie about the 1943 famine. While searching for a movie and famine, they replicate the very systems of hierarchy and exploitation that compounded the famine of 1943. As his career progressed, Sen emerged as a truly pan-Indian director, switching languages effortlessly and directing a whole range of actors. Sen had two ways of dealing with politics. One was the clear Marxist positioning that he had in the Kalkata trilogy and the other was through satire, a caricature of a bureaucrat. Bhuvan Chom is a railway officer, a staunch Bengali government official, who wants to be a hunter. Bhuvan Chom goes on a trip to the countryside where his inept urban ways make him a misfit. But he persists and meets a simple country girl who teaches him that manners do not make a man, but good nature does. I need films which have not been made before. I need films where I can make the fullest, most intimate use of the visual and the word. I wanted to go in for de-emphasizing these plots and the incidents, depending more on feelings, something like this. Should we take a holistic look at Merlant Sen's work, we will see that the evolution of a cinematic style and the pattern of his choices of subject material have been somewhat uneven. But his commitment and devotion to the cinema of ideas is unparalleled in Indian cinema and his reputation continues to grow.