Rudaali (1993)
Shanichari is a beautiful girl born in lower cast and her life is full of sufferings because of lower cast, poor finances, lost parents, drunken husband, mischievous son. The title refers to a custom in some parts of Rajasthan—where aristocratic women were long kept secluded and veiled—of hiring professional women mourners on the death of a male relative, a rudaali (pronounced “roo-dah-lee”—literally, a female “weeper”) to publicly express the grief that family members, constrained by their high social status, were not permitted to display—or at times, perhaps did not feel. Underwritten by the National Film Development Corporation (NFDC) and Doordarshan (Indian national television) and based on a short story by famed Bengali author Mahasweta Devi—whose tales often focus on the travails of low-caste women.
Director: Kalpana Lajmi
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Dimple Kapadia as Shanichari |
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Rakhee Gulzar as Bhikni |
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Raj Babbar as Thakur |
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Raghubir Yadav as Budhwa |
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Sushmita Mukherjee as Mungri |
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Amjad Khan as Thakur Ramavtar Singh |
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Ravi Jhankal as |
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Suneel Sinha as |
| Directing | Kalpana Lajmi | Director |
| Camera | Santosh Sivan | Director of Photography |
| Editing | Bhanudas Divakar | Editor |
| Camera | Dharam Gulati | Director of Photography |
| Writing | Gulzar | Writer |
| Production | Ravi Gupta | Producer |
| Production | Ravi Malik | Producer |
| Writing | Kalpana Lajmi | Writer |
| Writing | Mahasweta Devi | Short Story |
| Sound | Lata Mangeshkar | Playback Singer |
| Sound | Bhupen Hazarika | Playback Singer |
| Sound | Bhupen Hazarika | Original Music Composer |
| Sound | Asha Bhosle | Playback Singer |
