Basu Bhattacharya dead

Basu Bhattacharya died in Bombay late on Thursday night. The director was 63 and suffered from acute pancreatitis.

Basuda began his career as an apprentice to Bimal Roy in Calcutta. When Roy moved to Bombay in the early fifties, his team -- Basuda, later-day directors Hrishikesh Mukherjee and Gulzar, art director Sudhendhu Roy, actor Nazir Hussein -- decided to move down as well.

In the early sixties, Basuda fell out with his mentor after he fell in love with Bimalda's daughter Rinki. The couple were married in 1963, despite Bimalda's opposition. Three years later, the lyricist Shailendra hired Basuda to direct his first film, Teesri Kasam, starring Raj Kapoor and Waheeda Rehman. The film won the President's gold medal, even though, like all his work, it was not a commercial success.

In his seventies trilogy Anubhav, Avishkar and Griha Pravesh, Basuda probed the man-woman relationship with his three films.

He returned to the man-woman theme in his last film, Astha, featuring Rekha, Om Puri and Navin Nischol, and based loosely on Luis Bunuel's Belle de Jour.

He was prominent in the movement for relevant cinema and was president of the Indian Film Directors Association for over 10 years.

His son Aditya will carry the torch into another generation. After he directed Raakh, with Aamir Khan in the lead, Aditya Bhattacharya moved to Italy where he is now making a bilingual film.