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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