Film society honours Tapan Sinha
The Metro Film Society Kochi, a collective of filmmakers and critics, is honouring this year’s Phalke Award wining director Tapan Sinha by screening his famous Ek Doctor Ki Maut (Death of a Doctor). The main objective of the Metro Film Society Kochi is to propagate good cinema by preparing a platform for screening classics and contemporary films from all over the world.
Made in 1990, Ek Doctor Ki Maut was greatly applauded among film critics and writers. The film went on to win the national award for the second best film, best director and special jury award for best actor in 1991 and Filmfare best screenplay award in 1992. Tapan Sinha was inspired by the life and death of Subhash Mukhopadhyay, a physician educated at the Calcutta Medical College.
Ek Doctor Ki Maut is an age-old story of society against genius. It tells the story of Dr. Dipankar Roy (Pankaj Kapoor) who discovers a vaccine for leprosy after years of painstaking research at the cost of his personal life. But the sudden media attention on his invention brings about professional jealousy and animosity among his colleagues and superiors.
Instead of getting a fair hearing for his work, continuous harassment takes the toll on Dr. Roy, despite the support given by his wife (Shabana Azmi) and colleagues like Dr. Kundu (Irfan Khan). Roy is shut down by his superiors in the health ministry, cut off from his work, forbidden to share it with the international medical community, and transferred to a remote village. As he survives a heart attack, the devastating blow comes in the form of two American scientists winning the credit for discovering the same vaccine.
