Anuradha Dingwaney Needham (AN): From what you have mentioned in our earlier conversations, you come from a lively, intellectually vibrant family that encouraged debate and arguments on political, social and cultural subjects and included a fair number of artists/creative people like your cousin Guru Dutt, himself an influential filmmaker. Could you please speak about this family background and its impact on your own work?

Shyam Benegal (SB): My father was a professional photographer. He had an excellent reputation as a portraitist. In his free time, he would shoot films with his 16mm camera usually featuring his children. He had a huge collection of these films. He had raised a large family – we were ten children in all – and since each child merited a film he would make one devoted to that child until the next one arrived. There were films made on each one of us apart from some others that he had made on different subjects. I was made aware of the cinema from as long back as I can remember. Photography and films were central to our lives from the very beginning. Our after-dinner entertainment usually consisted of watching the films made by my father accompanied by a running commentary volunteered by one of the children, which added a comic edge to the show. That’s how my involvement with the cinema began and eventually led me to become a professional filmmaker. It helped that there was a 16mm movie camera that belonged to my father which was available to me, if I ever wanted to use it, which I did when I was around twelve years of age. I made a film about my siblings and cousins coming together during the summer vacation. It was called Chhutiyon mein Mauj Maza (Fun and Games during Holidays). This was the first film I made.

There was a cinema catering largely to an army garrison close to where we lived, in the cantonment area of the city of Secunderabad/Hyderabad. Since it was primarily meant for the army, there was a change of programme almost every other day – films in different Indian languages with an English-language film being shown on the weekend.