OM PURI

7 Jan

(18 October 1950 - 6 January 2017)

The award-winning Indian actor enjoyed great success in Bollywood, Hollywood and Pinewood in a career that included over 300 appearances in both film and television. He must have been one of the hardest working actors in the world. He entered films in India in 1975 making features and shorts, including Satyajit Ray’s TV movie Deliverance (1981). He had a small part in Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi and, in the 1980s, sometimes made up to nine films a year, most of which never reached the UK. However, we would know him from Roland Joffé’s Time Traveller and City of God, filmed in India, Wolf, The Ghost and the Darkness, My Son the Fanatic, The Jewel in the Crown TV series, and most notably East is East, about a Pakistani father’s troubles with his family in Manchester. The sequel was West is West. He was also in The Parole Officer, The Zookeeper, Ismail Merchant’s The Mystic Masseur, Code 46, Charlie Wilson’s War, The Hundred Foot Journey and Viceroy's House. And he still has another four films awaiting release. He received an honorary OBE in 2004.

MICHAEL DARVELL

Michael Darvell

Michael Darvell trained as a librarian at Watford and in Surrey before joining Ealing Libraries where he became Music Librarian for the borough. He edited Masthead, the magazine of the University of North London School of Librarianship, The Surrealist, the staff magazine of Surrey County Library, and contributed to the Assistant Librarian and London Librarian professional journals. A freelance film reviewer since 1970, he has written for Film, Films Illustrated, Film Review, Movie Maker and Radio Times, as well as editing Montage, the London film societies magazine, for ten years. A change of career saw him joining What’s On in London as Features Editor and he eventually stepped into the shoes of the late F. Maurice Speed (founding father of Film Review annual) as the magazine’s Editor. From 2007 to 2015, he was co-editor of the Film Review annual with Mansel Stimpson. As well as writing about films, Michael has reviewed theatre for The Stage newspaper, and has written about music theatre and cabaret for the Classical Source and Musical Theatre Review websites. He is also a former restaurant critic for the ViewLondon website. Michael has been a member of the London Film Critics’ Circle since 2005.

OM PURI

WILLIAM PETER BLATTY

DEBBIE REYNOLDS