SACF Lifetime Achievement Award in the Year 2009
The Partition of India has always been the text and sub-text of the work of Yavar Abbas where he has consistently taken an ideological stand. His films present India from the inside. With his deep attachment and closeness to his homeland together with the perspective that distance has given him, these films are unique in the sense that the filmmaker and his camera have become part of the life being filmed and the films emerge as an organic entity that Yavar calls ‘Real Life Films’.
Yavar’s films occupy a unique place in the corpus of films by people of South Asian origin. They narrate, explore and document the evolution of the Indian people after India was partitioned and was freed from British rule. They reveal Yavar Abbas’ natural feel, empathy and understanding of India which enables him to select and treat the subject of his films with sensitivity and insight.
Yavar’s films project ancient India’s broad all-embracing spirit, her universalism and pluralism that have been her hallmark for centuries. Moving with as much ease among princes and bureaucrats and even those who have risen to exalted spiritual heights, as with the common man on the street, Yavar Abbas not only gives us glimpses into the life of the glitterati but also of what appears from a subaltern level.
The quality and sincerity of his films have won him recognition and praise from the very best of Indian filmmakers including no less a luminary than Satyajit Ray and closer to our times Shyam Benegal.
SACF is delighted and honoured to be associated with filmmaker Yavar Abbas from the outset and to have chosen him for SACF’s very first ‘Lifetime Achievement Award’.