'''Maya Miriga'''


aka Maya Mriga aka The Mirage
1983 115’ col Oriya
d/sc/co-st Nirad N. Mahapatra pc Lotus Prod.
co-st/dial Bibhuti Patnaik c Rajagopal Mishra
m Bhaskar Chandavarkar
lp Bansidhar Satpathy, Manimala, Binod
Mishra, Manaswini, Sampad Mahapatra, Sujata,
Vivekananda Satpathy, Kishori Debi,
Managaraj, Shriranjan Mohanty, Kunumuni,
Tikina


FTII-graduate Mahapatra’s low-key first
feature, shot on 16mm with non-professional
actors in Puri, a small coastal town in Orissa.
The plot concerns the break-up of a middleclass
extended family. The former freedom
fighter Raj Kishore (Satpathy), now an elderly
school headmaster, lives with his four sons and
only daughter. The eldest son Tuku (Mishra)
and his wife Prabha (Manaswini) are expected
to help pay for the education of the younger
siblings while the second son Tutu (Mahapatra)
marries a well-off woman (Sujata) who insists
on a separate household. In the end, Tuku
refuses to keep shouldering the burdens of the
extended family and the unit disintegrates. The
director, a noted teacher and writer of film
theory, acknowledges the influence of Yasujiro
Ozu’s editing style.

[[Film]]