Sonali Bendre on why she didn’t hide her cancer diagnosis from son: We hoped one day he will not be lying to us

Agencies
March 3, 2019

Mumbai, Mar 3: Actor Sonali Bendre on Saturday said she wanted to be in control of her life story and that is the reason why she decided to share her cancer battle with the people on social media. The 44-year-old actor was diagnosed with high-grade cancer last year and had to undergo treatment in New York. She returned home in December and has resumed work.

Sonali had kept in loop her fans on social media about the various struggles she faced during her battle with the disease and she said it was important to be honest with people about what she went through, including the pain.

“I wanted to be charge of my narrative from the start. When you are a public figure, there are so many narratives that it out there. And suddenly you lose hold of that narrative very quickly. It becomes a different thing all together,” the actor said at the India Today Conclave 2019.

“As I went through the process, I realised that there are so many others that would be going to through it. I wouldn’t be honest that if I said, ‘Everything was sunshine’. It was not, it was painful and you do have to go through it,” she added.

Sonali said like many others, she also encountered pain and had many low phases and she learned that one can do nothing but to deal with it.

“Every time I kept thinking ‘Why am I not being positive?’ and then you start feeling ‘Did I do something wrong?’. But there is pain and what can you do about it. “You have to go through that pain. And that’s why I wanted it to be out that there is pain and it is hard. The point is to reduce that time to as minimum and prolong the good time for as long as you can,” the actor said.

Sonali, who ruled the ‘90s with movies such as Diljale, Sarfarosh, Duplicate and Hum Saath Saath Hain, is married to filmmaker Goldie Behl. The couple has a 13-year-old son Ranveer.

Goldie and her, Sonali said, were honest when it came to breaking the news of her cancer to Ranveer and they never concealed any part of that journey from their son.

“Ranveer was on a school trip and I could have sent him back home but I needed to see him. I need to be able to talk to him. That’s the way we have brought him up and we have always been very honest with him. “The only thing that we were hoping was that by not lying to him, one day he will not be lying to us. That he will be honest with us and that was the example we were trying to set.”

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Agencies
January 11,2020

New Delhi, Jan 11: The Delhi High Court on Saturday restrained from releasing Deepika Padukone-starrer 'Chhapaak' movie without due credits to the lawyer who represented the acid attack survivor, Lakshmi Agarwal, in her legal battle.

The restraint will be effective from January 15 in multiplexes and live streaming and for others from January 17.

The court directed filmmaker Meghna Gulzar to give due credit to lawyer Aparna Bhat who fought the criminal case for the acid survivor on whose life the movie is based.

It passed the order on a petition filed by Fox Studio challenging a trial court order which had directed the filmmakers to give credit to Bhat.

Delhi's Patiala House Court had earlier this week passed an order granting an ex-parte interim mandatory injunction directed that the filmmaker has to carry a line "Aparna Bhat continues to fight cases of sexual and physical violence against women" during the screening of the film.

Fox Studios then requested the Delhi High Court to set aside the trial court order.

The petitioner submitted that if the order passed in a suit filed just one day before the release of the film, is not vacated, varied or modified, then the petitioner will suffer grave injustice and irreparable harm and injury.

The movie, which hit the cinemas yesterday, is based on Laxmi's life. In 2005, at the age of 15, she was allegedly attacked by a spurned lover.

Laxmi had to undergo several surgeries. Later, she started helping other acid attack survivors and promoted campaigns to stop such gruesome attacks.

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News Network
April 28,2020

Los Angeles, Apr 28: A top-secret documentary feature about former first lady Michelle Obama is set to start streaming worldwide on Netflix from May 6.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the doc shares its title with Michelle Obama's best-selling 2018 memoir "Becoming" and recounts some of the same history of her life.

"Becoming", like the best documentary feature Oscar winner "American Factory", comes from Higher Ground, the production company run by former President Barack Obama and the former first lady, which has an exclusive pact with the streamer.

The documentary marks the feature directorial debut of cinematographer Nadia Hallgren known for her work on "Trouble the Water", the 2008 indie about a couple surviving failed levees, bungling bureaucrats, and their own troubled past and a portrait of a community abandoned long before Hurricane Katrina hit.

"Becoming" also picks up where that story left off by following her on the 34-city tour that she undertook while promoting her book.

"Those months I spent traveling meeting and connecting with people in cities across the globe drove home the idea that what we share in common is deep and real and can't be messed with.

"In groups large and small, young and old, unique and united, we came together and shared stories, filling those spaces with our joys, worries and dreams. We processed the past and imagined a better future. In talking about the idea of 'becoming,' many of us dared to say our hopes out loud," Michelle Obama said in a statement.

The former first lady also addressed the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

"It's hard these days to feel grounded or hopeful, but I hope that like me, you'll find joy and a bit of respite in what Nadia has made. Because she's a rare talent, someone whose intelligence and compassion for others comes through in every frame she shoots.

"Most importantly, she understands the meaning of community, the power of community, and her work is magically able to depict it.

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News Network
February 12,2020

London, Feb 12: Oscar-winning British director Steve McQueen is returning to his art roots with a series of short films at London's Tate Modern art gallery, offering a sensory exploration of black identity.

McQueen, who became the first black director to win the best picture Academy Award in 2014 for "12 Years a Slave", is now based between London and Amsterdam and is focused on championing diversity in the film industry.

Visitors to his new exhibition will be greeted by "Static", a film of New York's Statue of Liberty, scrutinising the iconic symbol from every possible angle at very close range against a deafening backdrop of the helicopter from where the footage was filmed.

"What interests Steve is our view of the world, how humans are trying to represent Liberty," said Fiontan Moran, assistant curator of the exhibition.

"7th Nov, 2001" features a still shot of a body while McQueen's cousin Marcus tells of how he accidentally killed his brother, a particularly traumatic experience for the artist.

"Western Deep" is another visceral work, giving a sense through sights and sounds in an interactive installation of the experiences of miners in South Africa, following them to the bottom of the mine.

"Ashes", meanwhile, is a tribute to a young fisherman from Grenada, the island where McQueen's family originated.

The images of beauty and sweetness filmed from his boat are tragically reversed on the other side of the projection screen, which shows a grave commissioned by McQueen for the eponymous young fisherman, who was killed by drug traffickers.

African-American singer, actor and civil rights activist Paul Robeson (1898-1976) is honoured in "End Credits".

The film shows censored FBI documents detailing the agency's surveillance of Robeson, read by a voice-over artist, for five hours.

"He is... testing the limits of how people can be documented in an era of mass surveillance," said Moran.

In a similarly militant vein, the exhibition features the sculpture "Weight", which was first shown in the prison cell where the writer and playwright Oscar Wilde was imprisoned.

It depicts a golden mosquito net draped over a metal prison bed frame, addressing the theme of confinement and the power of the imagination to break free.

The show runs alongside an exhibition of McQueen's giant portraits of London school classes, many of which appeared on the streets of London last year.

"I remember my first school trip to Tate when I was an impressionable eight-year-old, which was really the moment I gained an understanding that anything is possible," said McQueen, adding it was "where in some ways my journey as an artist first began".

He recently told the Financial Times newspaper the difference between his art films and his feature films was that the former were poetry, the latter like a novel.

"Poetry is condensed, precise, fragmented," he said. "The novel is the yarn".

The exhibition opens on February 13 and runs until May 11.

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