[4] Due to his dedication to formalism, and with the reputation of his first feature—Maya Darpan being considered among Indian cinema's first formalist films—critics and film enthusiasts often associated him with filmmakers such as Pier Paolo Pasolini, Andrei Tarkovsky and Jacques Rivette.
[5] He was also known as a teacher at his alma mater, the Film and Television Institute of India, and as a theorist of cinema.
[1] He attended the University of Bombay to obtain an undergraduate degree in political science and history, and studied advanced direction and screenplay writing at the Film and Television Institute of India in Pune, where he was a student of Ritwik Ghatak.
On a French government scholarship,[1][7] he moved to France to further his studies at the Institut des hautes études cinématographiques (IDHEC) and assisted Robert Bresson on Une Femme Douce.
[8] After returning to India, Shahani made his first feature film Maya Darpan in 1972.
He received funding twelve years later to make his next full-length feature film, Tarang, in 1984.
[1][4][8][10][11] From 1976 to 1978, he held a Homi Bhabha Fellowship to study the epic tradition of the Mahābhārata, Buddhist iconography, Indian classical music and the Bhakti movement.
[12][13] Shahani was also involved with India's archiving and restoration initiative, the Film Heritage Foundation.
Shahani considered Roberto Rossellini and Robert Bresson as major influences on his work and those from whom he learned the most.