“In Ritwik Ghatak, there was a voice in cinema that wanted to address the political mayhem of the Bengal partition,” said actor-director Parambrata Chakraborty at a tribute for Bengali auteur Ritwik Ghatak at a centenary memorial talk hosted by the 31st Kolkata International Film Festival (KIFF) on Tuesday (November 11, 2025).
With a seminar, an exhibition, a conversation, the 31st KIFF is paying its tribute to one of the greatest Bengali filmmakers of all time, Ritwik Ghatak, as part of his centenary celebrations in 2025.
On Tuesday (November 11), a wide audience at Sisir Mancha, adjoining the West Bengal Film Centre in Kolkata’s Nandan, witnessed a panel discussion on ‘Ritwik Ghatak Centenary and Beyond’ by renowned film personalities like Mr. Chattopadhyay, who is also Ghatak’s grandchild, filmmakers Supriyo Sen and Ashoke Vishwanathan, and former director-in-charge of the Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute Amaresh Chakrabarti. The session was being moderated by filmmaker Sekhar Das.
“What struck me when I was in my teens, at an age when I started becoming more aware of the history of the subcontinent, is that the cinema of the 50s and 60s in Bengal had no signs of the Partition. That was just a few decades since one of the largest human displacements in modern history… [Ghatak] was the one who proved there wasn’t a complete denial of what we had gone through as a race,” Mr. Chattopadhyay said.
He said that the memories and history of the Partition should be passed on to future generations through Ghatak’s films and that his filmography had ‘sensitised’ Mr. Chattopadhyay to his own Bengali identity.
Ritwik Ghatak, who was considered part of the ‘great trinity’ of Bengali cinema alongside Satyajit Ray and Mrinal Sen, was known best for iconic films that depicted the pain of displacement and social catastrophes during the Bengal partition, like Meghe Dhaka Tara (1960) and Subarnarekha (1965). He was also a professor of film direction and, briefly, vice-principal, at the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), mentoring students like Mani Kaul, Kumar Shahani and Adoor Gopalakrishnan who went to become well-known filmmakers in their own right.
“My connection with Ghatak is through the memories of Partition. On one hand, there was the romantic nostalgia of the landscapes left behind, on the other hand, it was a time of violence and bloodshed. I have not found the stories of our massive, displaced community anywhere else in cinema except in Ritwik Ghatak’s films,” Mr. Sen said, during the centenary talk on Tuesday (November 11).
Filmmaker and critic Mr. Vishwanathan, also an alumnus of FTII, highlighted Ghatak’s departure from the styles of Hollywood and neo-realism and said the auteur did not carry the burden of influences, but instead paved his own path with his cinematography, sound design, music, and editing.
“Ghatak is the only filmmaker in India who did not have pre-determined cinematic influences… [Like in his film Jukti Takko Aar Gappo,] he had dispensed with the so-called narrative. There are narrative patches, but even those will leave you dissatisfied if you’re looking for some semblance of a story… He doesn’t follow the dictums that Hollywood has come up with. He provides, like [Japanese filmmaker Kenzi Mizoguchi], an alternative system of filmmaking,” Mr. Vishwanathan said during the panel discussion on Tuesday (November 11).
He highlighted that the auteur very prominently represented Dalit society and identity in his films.
Former director-in-charge of the Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute, Amaresh Chakrabarti, recalled Ghatak’s association with the Indian People Theatre’s Association and the Communist Party of India at the time, as well as Ghatak’s academic essay titled ‘On the Cultural Front’ in 1954 on what the party’s cultural stance should be.
“If we revisit the essay we will see that Ghatak had said even then, that theatre cannot exist in an insular environment based on the exclusion of things termed bourgeoisie, and that theatre demands open-mindedness. [He had proposed] examining culture, being open to working on Indian epics like Ramayana and Mahabharata. These ideas were not well received at the time,” he said.
As part of the centenary tribute, the 31st KIFF organised screenings of six of Ghatak’s films during the festival between November 6 and November 13, along with an exhibition of his memorabilia at Nandan, the panel discussion today, and the Ritwik Ghatak Memorial Conversation between filmmakers Adoor Gopalakrishnan and Anup Singh, scheduled for November 12.
Published – November 12, 2025 02:58 am IST
