Ritwik Ghatak

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Ritwik Ghatak

Born November 4, 1925(1925-11-04)
Dhaka, East Bengal (present day Bangladesh)
Died February 6, 1976 (aged 50)
Kolkata, India
Occupation Film maker and writer

Ritwik Ghatak (Bengali: ঋত্বিক (কুমার) ঘটক, Rittik (Kumar) Ghôţok) (November 4, 1925 – February 6, 1976) was a Bengali Indian script writer and filmmaker. Ghatak's stature among Bengali directors is comparable to that of Satyajit Ray and Mrinal Sen.

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[edit] Early life

Ritwik Ghatak was born in Dhaka in East Bengal (now Bangladesh). He and his family moved to Kolkata just before millions of other refugees from East Bengal began to flood into the city, fleeing the catastrophic 1943 famine and the Partition of India in 1947. Identification with this tide of refugees was to define his practice, providing an overriding metaphor for cultural dismemberment and exile that unified his subsequent creative work.

[edit] Creative career

In 1948, Ghatak wrote his first play Kalo sayar (The Dark Lake), and participated in a revival of the landmark play Nabanna. In 1951, Ghatak joined the Indian People's Theatre Association ( IPTA ). He wrote, directed and acted in plays and translated Bertolt Brecht and Gogol into Bengali. In 1957, he wrote and directed his last play Jwala (The Burning).

Ghatak entered film industry with Nemai Ghosh's Chinnamul (1950) as actor and assistant director. Chinnamul was followed two years later by Ghatak's first completed film Nagarik (1952), both major break-throughs for the Indian cinema. Ghatak's early work sought theatrical and literary precedent in bringing together a documentary realism, a remarkable stylized performance often drawn from the folk theatre, and a Brechtian use of the filmic apparatus.

Ritwik Ghatak directed eight full-length films. His best-known films, Meghe Dhaka Tara (The Cloud-Capped Star) (1960), Komal Gandhar (E-Flat) (1961), and Subarnarekha (1962), a trilogy based in Calcutta and addressing the condition of refugee-hood, proved controversial and the commercial failure of Komal Gandhar (E-Flat) and Subarnekha prevented him from making features through the remainder of the 1960s. In all three films, he used a basic and at times starkly realistic storyline, upon which he inscribed a range of mythic references,especially of the Mother Deliverer, through a dense overlay of visual and aural registers.

Ghatak moved briefly to Pune in 1966, where he taught at the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII). During his year at FTII, he was involved in the making of two student films, viz., Fear and Rendezvous.

Ghatak returned to film making only in the 1970s, when a Bangladeshi producer financed the 1973 epic Titash Ekti Nadir Naam (A River Called Titas). Making films became difficult for his poor health, due to extreme alcoholism and consequent diseases. His last film, and perhaps his most unusual, was the 'autobiographical' Jukti Takka ar Gappo (Reason, Debate And Story) (1974).He had a number of incomplete feature and short films in his credit.

He belonged to an illustrious family. His father Suresh Chandra Ghatak was a district magistrate and also a poet and playwright, mother's name was Indubala Devi. He was their 11th and youngest child. His elder brother Manish Ghatak was an acclaimed radical writer of his time, a professor of English and a social activist who was deeply involved with IPTA theatre movement in its heyday and later on headed the famous Tebhaga Andolan of North Bengal. Manish Ghatak's daughter is the legendary writer and activist Mahasweta Devi.Ritwik's wife Surama was a school teacher and his son Ritaban is a film-maker.

[edit] Impact and influence

At the time of his death (February 1976), Ghatak's primary impact would seem to have been through former students. Though his stint teaching film at FTII was brief, one-time students Mani Kaul, John Abraham, and especially Kumar Shahani (among many others), carried Ghatak's ideas and theories, which were further elaborated upon in his book Cinema And I, into the mainstream of Indian art film.

Ghatak stood entirely outside the world of Indian commercial film. None of the elements of the commercial cinema (singing and dancing, melodrama, stars, glitz) featured in his work. He was watched by students and intelligentsia, not by the masses. His students have also tended to work in the art cinema or independent cinema tradition.

Satyajit Ray, commonly held to be the greatest of the Bengali neo-realist directors, succeeded in creating an audience outside India during his lifetime and winning many prestigious international awards. Ghatak was not so fortunate. While he was alive, his films were appreciated primarily within India. (Satyajit Ray did what he could to promote his colleague, but Ray's generous praise did not translate into international fame for Ghatak.)

Ghatak's impact began to spread beyond India much later; beginning in the 1990s, a project to restore Ghatak's films was undertaken, and international exhibitions (and subsequent DVD releases) have belatedly generated an increasingly global audience.

[edit] Filmography

[edit] Feature films

[edit] Short films and documentaries

  • The Life of the Adivasis (1955)
  • Places of Historic Interest in Bihar (1955)
  • Scissors (1962)
  • Fear (1965)
  • Rendezvous (1965)
  • Civil Defence (1965)
  • Scientists of Tomorrow (1967)
  • Yeh Kyon (Why / The Question) (1970)
  • Amar Lenin (My Lenin) (1970)
  • Puruliar Chhau (The Chhau Dance of Purulia) (1970)
  • Durbar Gati Padma (The Turbulent Padma) (1971)


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Cinema of Bengal
History
Directors
Actors
Films


[edit] External links

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Persondata
NAME Ghatak, Ritwik
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION Film maker
DATE OF BIRTH November 4, 1925
PLACE OF BIRTH Dhaka, East Bengal
DATE OF DEATH November 4, 1925
PLACE OF DEATH Kolkata, India
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ritwik_Ghatak"
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