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Film producer Basant Nayak passes away

BHUBANESWAR: Prominent Oriya film producer-director-distributor Basant Nayak, recipient of the State's highest honour for cinema – the Jayadev Puraskar – breathed his last in a hospital here on Monday. He was 74 and is survived by wife and three sons.

Often referred to as the ‘Movie Moghul' of Oriya film industry, the grand old man of Oriya film industry belonged to the millennium city of Cuttack that was the cradle of Oriya cinema for decades. Young Nayak commenced his career as a textiles engineer in Mumbai in 1959 and his entry into cinema as the distributor of the immensely popular Oriya movie ‘ Jajabara' was quite accidental. Leaving Mumbai, he had set up his independent business in his home town of Cuttack when film producer Bijay Patnaik lured him into the industry as a distributor of his film. And there was no looking back.

He made 20 films and almost all of them fetched both commercial and critical success as popular cinema. He did not believe in compartmentalisation of cinema into mainstream and parallel. Cinema must be made for the masses and it must entertain, he used to say. And true to his convictions, his first film ‘Nagaphasa' made in 1977 and ‘Danda Balunga' made in 1984 were winners of State Film Awards. Similarly, ‘Jahaku Rakhibe Ananta' made in 1988 was selected for Indian Panorama apart from claiming three State Film Awards. Films made in recent times like ‘I Love You, Romeo', ‘The Lover Boy', and ‘Don' speak volumes of the master filmmaker's versatility and vision.

Distinction

Nayak has the distinction of introducing a number of film stars -- from the likes of Bijay Mohanty and Malabika Ray to Anubhav Mohanty and Babushan. He believed in the new blood and was convinced that the viewers always looked for freshness in all aspects of the films -- from acting and techniques to story telling to treatment. As the filmmaker, he used to get himself intimately involved in all departments at the pre and post production level apart from scripting the stories for his productions.

He could rope in veteran Bollywood and Bengali actors such as Rakhee Gulzar, Mithun Chakraborty, Sujit Kumar, Aruna Irani, Paintal, Prosenjeet, Debashree Roy, and Satabdi Roy for his films, a rare achievement for an Oriya film personality.

Nayak did not confine himself to Oriya films. As a distributor, he had more than 500 films in Hindi, Bengali, and Oriya to his credit under the Brajaraj Movies banner. He also made the Hindi film ‘Spandan' that won national award as the best film on family welfare. He also made films in Bengali.

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