Thaindian News

Dhaka, Aug 26 (IANS) Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina will extend her all-out cooperation in completing “Kagojer Phool”, the unfinished movie of filmmaker Tareque Masud who was killed in a road accident recently.

Masud, 54, and media personality Ashfaque Munier Mishuk, died Aug 13 in an accident while on their way to meet a senior official for permission to shoot for his latest project “Kagojer Phool” (The Paper Flower) after visiting a shooting spot.

The prime minister made the promise when Masud’s wife Catherine and Mishuk’s wife Kazi Monjuly called on her in the capital, the Daily Star reported.

Hasina termed their as “irreparable losses to the nation”.

“‘Muktir Gaan’ was a bright ray of light in the dark,” Hasina said, referring to another popular movie by Masud.

She recalled that Shaheed Munier Chowdhury, father of Mishuk, was her teacher.

Catherine Masud also urged the prime minister to provide support for the development of decent movies in the country. Hasina assured her she would extend all-out support for making such films.

Hasina in turn requested Catherine to stay in Bangladesh and complete all unfinished tasks of her late husband.

The New York Times says Masud’s best-known film was “The Clay Bird”, which won an International Critics’ award at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival for its “authentic, moving and delicate portrayal of a country struggling for its democratic rights”.

Written and directed by Masud and co-written, edited and produced by his wife, the film tells of a poor Muslim boy sent away by his rigid, conservative father to a madrasa, a religious school, despite the concerns of his mother.

Tareque Masud was born Dec 6, 1956, in Nurpur village in Bangladesh. He spent most of his childhood in a madrasa during the increasing tensions in East Pakistan, as Bangladesh was then known. He gave up his religious studies after Bangladesh’s independence in 1971, began a general education, became actively involved in the film society movement and eventually obtained a master’s degree in history from the University of Dhaka.

His first film, “Adam Surat” (”Inner Strength”), was a 55-minute documentary about the Bangladeshi painter Sheikh Mohammed Sultan that he began in 1982.

He married Catherine Shapere from Chicago, and together they founded Audiovision, a film production company in Dhaka, and produced and directed many documentaries and animated films together.

Masud was a founding member of Short Film Forum, the primary forum for alternative filmmakers in Bangladesh, and was the coordinator of the first International Short Film Festival, held in Dhaka in 1988.