Smita Patil was a woman of exceptionally striking beauty, though scarcely of the type that predominates in the commercial cinema, and she displayed an equally extraordinary maturity in every performance she ever gave. Though she was to appear in some commerical releases, she was clearly out of place in those roles. Her career was tragically cut short by her death in 1986 during childbirth, as if in ominous reminder of the precariousness of the lives of women in India. Her talent as a photographer has only been recently discovered after the 1992 exhibition of her photographs, Through the eyes of Smita, at the National Centre for the Performing Arts, Bombay.
Smita Patil (1955 -13 december) was a leading actress of the cinema. Her unconventional beauty and arresting screen presence made her the undying symbol of the New Wave cinema in India. Smita Patil was also a women’s rights activist.Smita Patil belongs to a generation of actresses, including Sushani Muley and Shabana Azmi, strongly associated with a radically political cinema of the 1970s. Her work includes films with parallel cinema directors like Shayam Benagal, pehlaj Nihalani and the more commercial Bollywood cinema. In 1977, she won the National Award for ’Best Actress’ for her performance in the Bhumika. In her films, Patil’s character often represents an intelligent femininity that stands in relief against the conventional background of male-dominated cinema (films like Bhumika, Umbartha, and Bazaar). In her more commercial films, her glamorous roles reveal the permeable boundaries between ’serious’ cinema and ’Bollywood’ in the Hindi film industry (films like Shakti and Namak Halaal).Patil was working as a TV news reader, and when Shyam Benegal discovered her, she was also an accomplished photographer
Smita Patil was a major player in the development of India’s alternative cinema during the ’70s and early ’80s. A devoted feminist outspoken about the ways in which traditional systems continue to oppress women, she was a model for the ’new Indian woman’ who was independent, sexually confident, and concerned about the world. In college, she began working in student films and as a TV newscaster. Her first major film role was in Shyam Benegal’s 1975 film MANTHAN, but she did not become a major artist until she appeared in his 1977 film BHUMIKA. Many offers for films rolled in after that, but she refused any that did not support her political and feminist agendas. She held her high standard until the early ’80s when she finally realized that by only accepting the few roles that fell into the category of alternative cinema that she could not have much affect on the mainstream women she’d hoped to reach. She then reluctantly began accepting mainstream roles, some of which she felt were exploitative and undignified. When not acting, she kept herself active in women’s issues; she even set up a women’s refuge in Bombay. With her two commercial films, ARDH SATYAand Umbartha, she was finally able to bring notions of alternative cinema to the general public. She died of complications shortly after the birth of her first child.