Efforts at improvement
The first real attempt to make films with disabled characters in a central role was in the early 1970s.
- Koshish (Effort) (India 1972 Dir Sampooran Singh Gulzar) showed the life of a speech- and hearing-impaired couple, played by Sanjeev Kumar and Jaya Bhachchan.
- Sparsh (Touch) (India 1979 Dir Sai Paranjape), in which Naseerudin Shah plays the part of a visually impaired Principal of a special school for blind children, who falls in love with a widowed volunteer (Shabana Azmi), who comes to serve in the school to fill the vacuum in her life after the death of her husband. Paranjape, a female director, made a sincere attempt to tell both sides of the story with a rare unsentimental equilibrium, dealing with the complexes embedded in the minds of both the characters.
The early 1990s saw the release of the most hyped film about the disabled:
- Khamoshi (Silence) (India 1996 Dir Sanjay Leela Bhansali). This was a musical, which dealt with the trauma of a deaf-mute couple who find it difficult to come to terms with the personal aspirations of their daughter, who is the pivot of their life. Though the film failed to deliver what it had promised, which was a real understanding of life as deaf people in hearing India, it is still remembered for the superb acting by the three main actors - Nana Patekar, Seema Biswas and Manisha Koirala.
- Kandukondain, Kandukondain (India 2000 Dir Rajiv Menon), was written by the director as a rework of Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen, with a disabled character finally getting the girl, rather than the slick computer executive. This film is discussed in detail below.
