With Mohammad Khasru's death, Bangladesh perhaps lost its biggest film writer and activist. Also an editor and organizer of many film-related projects, Khasru surely had been an inspiration to many famous film-makers for years.
One of the results of Mohammad Khasru’s endeavours in the film society movement was the establishment of The Film Studies Center. He will also be remembered for his pioneering role in establishing the Federation of Film Societies of Bangladesh in 1973 and Bangladesh Film Archive in 1978, and his illustrious editorship of the country’s most celebrated film magazine Dhrupadi and Chalachitrapatra.
The revered critic, patron and connoisseur of Bangladeshi films died at the age of 73 on February 19 while undergoing treatment. He was suffering from diabetes, pneumonia and asthma, along with other old-age complications.
He worked as an assistant director in a Bangladesh- India joint-venture film named Palank, which was directed by Rajen Tarafdar. His interview of eminent Bengali filmmaker and script writer Ritwik Ghatak had been published in newspapers several times.
Following the communal riots in the early 1950s, Muhammad Khasru’s family migrated to Dhaka from his birthplace, India. He was born in Hooghly, West Bengal in 1946.
Khasru received the Hiralal Sen Lifetime Achievement Award and the Dhaka University Chalachitra Sangsad’s Lifetime Achievement Award for his unforgettable contributions to the landscape of Bangladeshi cinema.
