Maya Darpan Screened in LA

One of the most significant films of the Indian Parallel Movement, Maya Darpan was screened at the Ted Mann Theater in Los Angeles.
Directed by Kumar Shahani and released in 1972, the 107-minute Hindi-language film follows Taran, a young woman living with her father in a small town on the cusp of industrialization. As her father becomes increasingly bitter over his inability to arrange a marriage for her, Taran finds quiet solace in her conversations with a progressive engineer sympathetic to emerging labor unions. The home grows more oppressive, and though she considers leaving to visit her brother, Taran ultimately chooses to stay, asserting her independence through a relationship with the engineer.

Maya Darpan was a breakthrough in cinematic form, with Shahani’s painterly direction moving deliberately away from linear storytelling. His use of color, movement, and sound rendered a rich visual and emotional language to capture Taran’s internal world, her sense of isolation, and the larger conflict between the individual and the weight of feudal and capitalist forces.
The screening in Los Angeles reflects the film’s continuing relevance and its place in global cinematic history as a landmark of India’s Parallel Cinema.