Influential director Shaji N Karun, whose films garnered international acclaim, died in Thiruvananthapuram on Monday. He was 73.
His first film, ‘Piravi’ (Birth), was a 1989 Malayalam film that won several national and international awards. The film marked the birth of a director who soon found a place in world cinema and grew to become one of the prominent Indian faces in the international film circuits.
Karun, who was conferred a Padma Shri in 2010, had been serving as the chairman of the Kerala State Film Development Corporation. A former chairman of the state Chalachitra Academy, he was conferred the J.C. Daniel Award — Kerala government’s most prestigious award in cinema – in 2023 and was one of the architects of the International Film Festival of Kerala, which was held for the first time in 1998.
Karun had started his career as a cinematographer in 1974. After securing a diploma in cinematography from ’s Film and Television Institute of India, he had a short stint as a cameraman at and later worked as an assistant in the film industry. His first independent movie as a cinematographer was for G Aravindan’s ‘Kanchana Sita’ in 1978, and eventually went on to work with Aravindan, a doyen of parallel films in Malayalam, on all his movies. Apart from Aravindan, he also wielded the camera for leading filmmakers of the 1980s such as K G George, Hariharan and M T Vasudevan Nair, working on as many as 40 films in Malayalam.
His much-acclaimed ‘Piravi’, which tells the story of a father’s endless wait for his missing son, won around 70 national and international awards at festivals — including Cannes. Its theme was compared to the case of Rajan, an engineering student who went missing during the Emergency, triggering political debate in Kerala.
The recognitions for ‘Piravi’ included the Charlie Chaplin Award at Edinburgh, the Silver Leopard at Locarno, the Camera d’Or Special Mention at Cannes, the Silver Hugo at Chicago and the President of India’s Gold Medal Award for the best film in the year 1989.
Apart from ‘Piravi’, Karun made six other feature films. Throughout his career as a director, he has been known as a filmmaker who never compromised on the aesthetics of film. A cinematographer-turned-director, Karun has been known for delivering well-crafted frames.
His second and third movies, ‘Swaham’ in 1994 and ‘Vanaprasatham’ in 1999, were also selected for Cannes. The 2010 movie ‘Kutty Srank’, with Mamootty playing the lead role, won the best film award at the National Film Awards 2010 and was screened in over 45 international film festivals, apart from getting a theatre release in Kerala.
His last movie ‘Olu’ — a fantasy film — had been the inaugural film of Indian panorama in IIFI in 2018 and had been selected as the opening film in several other international festivals.
In Kerala, Karun had been associated with Left movements. He had also served as the president of pro-Left Purogamana Kala Sahitya Sangham, a progressive movement of writers and artists.
Offering his condolences, Kerala Chief Minister said the state had lost a unique filmmaker. “He was a flagbearer of new wave cinema in Malayalam. He worked tirelessly for the progress of the film industry. His death is a great loss not only to the film industry but also to Kerala,” Vijayan said.
