Madhur Bhandarkar

Madhur Bhandarkar मधुर भंडारकर

Madhur Bhandarkar, ( मधुर भंडारकर ), is a widely renowned award winning Indian film director. He bagged the national award for the best director for the movie Traffic Signal released in the year 2007. His movies generally revolve around the common issues faced by the Indian society highlighting the plight of both upper class and lower class peoples.

Biography

Personal

He was born in a Maharashtrian Saraswat Brahmin family. Bhandarkar married his girlfriend Renu Namboodiri-Bhandarkar on December 15, 2003 in Mumbai. They now have a daughter named Siddhi. Madhur is the life member of International film and Television Research Centre of Asian Academy of Film & Television,Noida.

Career

Madhur Bhandarkar ran a video cassette library in Khar. This gave him access to a large collection of movies and studying movie making. This is similar to Quentin Tarantino who worked in a video rental store and did manage to get access to collection of movies. Bhandarkar was a former assistant to Ram Gopal Varma, he played a small role in his 1995 film Rangeela but he made his directorial debut with Trishakti in 1999. The film had a relatively low key cast and was largely ignored at the box office. After two years he directed Chandni Bar (2001) starring Tabu (actress) and Atul Kulkarni. The film was a critically acclaimed success, which took Bhandarkar into the top league of filmmakers in Bollywood. He received his 1st national award for this film.

This was followed by another critically acclaimed Satta (2003) Bhandarkar roped in Konkona Sen Sharma for his next film Page 3 (2005). The film did very well at the box office, was favoured by the critics, and made him a recepient of National Awards for the second time. His next release was Corporate (2006) followed by Traffic Signal (2007) which was again praised by the critics. The 54th National Film Awards Jury has chosen him for the outstanding director award for "Traffic Signal". its given him his third national award..

Madhur Bhandarkar is always known for his socially relevant and hard hitting films.

Directorial style

In most of his films Bhandarkar has made the female the main protagonist. This has been seen in four of his films: Tabu in Chandni Bar, Raveena Tandon in Satta, Konkona Sen Sharma in Page 3, Bipasha Basu in Corporate, and Priyanka Chopra in Fashion.

In an interview with Sanjay Ram of Businessofcinema.com he said "My movies are not exposes, maybe they just hold up a mirror to society. My movies are not judgmental; I just show what happens in our society, sometimes there could be a solution and sometimes there may be none. Life goes on."

Controversy

On July 2004, he was allegedly accused for casting couch and was filed for a big case when Preeti Jain went to court. She stated she slept with him from 1999 to 2004 as he promised her a role in a movie and marriage. On September 2005, Jain was arrested as she gave Rs. 70,000 to the underworld people to have him killed. [1][2]

However in January 2006 the Versova Police Station had asked a magistrate at Railway Mobile Court in Andheri for the classification of the case against him as 'B' summary and dismiss it as during investigation police have found out that the complaint filed against Bhandarkar is false.

Filmography

Director

• Fashion (2008)
• Traffic Signal (2007)
• Corporate (2006)
• Page 3 (2005)
• Aan: Men at Work (2004)
• Satta (2003)
• Chandni Bar (2001)
• Trishakti (1999)

Writer

• Fashion (2008)
• Traffic Signal (2007)
• Corporate (2006)
• Page 3 (2005)
• Satta (2003)
• Chandni Bar (2001)

External links

• Madhur Bhandarkar at IMDb