In Conversation With Filmmaker Shyam Benegal Part-III
By kamla bhatt • Apr 10th, 2006Category: Bollywood, Entertainment, Hyderabad, Mumbai, New York, People
In our third segment Mr. Shyam Benegal talks about his career in advertising, and how he got into feature films.
He took a circuitous route before he started making feature films. He spent 14 years in the advertising world, and produced about 150 films per year. He made ad films for Gold Spot, Thums Up, Rexona, Surf and Amul. He was part of the creative team that came up with the Amul butter baby mascot. A
After spending 14 years in the advertising industry, he took a sabbatical and traveled to the US on a Homi Bhabha fellowship. In the US he attended a children’s TV workshop, and worked briefly at Boston’s WGBH and NY WNET. When he returned to India, he got busy with the production of his first feature film.
Mr. Benegal made his first feature film Ankur in 1973. Everybody in the film was a newcomer, except for the camera person Govind Nihalani.
Kamla Bhatt is the host and producer of an Internet Radio show where listeners can find stories about the new and emerging India and the global Indian community. As a pioneer of 'internet radio' format in India Kamla started her first show News about India, followed by TalkNewsIndia in 2005. In 2006 she premiered her new show: The Kamla Bhatt Show: Life, People and Ideas. 
