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Published : 19 Feb 2019, 02:36 PM
He had contributed to the movement spanning over five decades by playing many roles including writer, editor and organiser.
Khasru was more than 70 years of age and had been suffering from heart and lung conditions.
He died at Dhaka’s BIRDEM Hospital at 1pm Tuesday, Belayet Hossain Mamun, president of Moviyana Film Society, told bdnews24.com.
He was admitted to BIRDEM Hospital on Feb 17 after having breathing difficulties, said Belayet. He had also been suffering from old age-related complications.
‘Khasru Bhai didn’t want to celebrate his birthday so he never divulged his actual date of birth. But we knew he was born in the year 1948.”
Muhammad Khasru was born in Hooghly, West Bengal after the partition of India. His father worked as an official at the Hooghly Jute Mill.
His family migrated to Dhaka in 1950 following the communal riots in India. Khasru grew up in Keraniganj’s Ruhitpur where he would go on to spend the rest of his life as a bachelor.
A pioneer of the film society movement, Khasru’s involvement with the cinema in Bangladesh stretches past 50 years. Five decades ago, collecting foreign films was an arduous task but Khasru and his colleagues worked in concert with foreign missions in Bangladesh to bring various European, American and African films to young audiences.
Khasru also played an important role in the formation of the Bangladesh Film Archive in 1978. However, he was dropped from the list of curators due to his lack of academic qualification.
Khasru was the editor of a number of cinema-related publications including Dhrupadi, Chalachitrapatra and Camera Jokhon Rifle. The publications that he edited are considered among the most significant documents on the history of cinema in Bangladesh.
Even though he could not manage to make his own film, Khasru is credited as an inspiration by a number of prominent Bangladeshi filmmakers including Tareque Masud and Mishuk Munier.
He received the Hiralal Sen Lifetime Achievement Award and the Dhaka University Chalachitra Sangsad’s Lifetime Achievement Award for his contributions to cinema in Bangladesh.
