Kumar Shahani

Kumar Shahani (born 7 December 1940) is an Indian film director and screenwriter, best known for his parallel cinema films Maya Darpan (1972), Tarang (1984), Khayal Gatha (1989) and Kasba (1990). Due to his dedication to formalism, and with the reputation of his first feature—Maya Darpan being considered among Indian cinema's first formalist films—critics and film enthusiasts often associated him with filmmakers such as Pier Paolo Pasolini, Andrei Tarkovsky and Jacques Rivette. He was also known as a teacher and theorist of cinema, whose essays The Shock of Desire and Other Essays, comprising 51 essays, was published by Tulika Books in 2015.