Talk about India, from India with you

Good morning/Good afternoon/Good evening my friends, wherever you are! This 11:00pm. 6^th February, 2013, Wednesday in India and once again I’m here for you. How are you friends? Hope you all are very well. 

On the 6^th February, West Bengal was lost a gem Ritwik Ghatak, from her heart in the year 1976. Ritwik Ghatak was a Bengali Indian filmmaker and script writer, regarded as one of the best Indian directors of the 20th Century, together with Satyajit Ray and Mrinal Sen. Despite that, he is still largely unknown in and outside of India.

Ritwik Ghatak was born in Dhaka in East Bengal (now Bangladesh). He and his family moved to Calcutta (now Kolkata) in West Bengal just before millions of other refugees from East Bengal began to flood into the city, fleeing the catastrophic Bengal famine of 1943 and the partition of Bengal 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. The 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War, which led to more refugees fleeing to India, was to also have a similar impact on his work.

In his creative career, Ghatak made 8 full length feature films and few short films and documentaries. He also wrote many short stories, plays and poetry. Ghatak wrote more than 50 articles and essays on film.

3 best movies of Ritwik Ghatak

Ghatak received quite a few awards in his career, including National Film Award's Rajat Kamal Award for Best Story in 1974 for his fim ‘Jukti Takko Aar Gappo’. Best Director's Award from Bangladesh Cine Journalist's Association for Titash Ekti Nadir Naam. The Government of India honoured him with the Padma Shri for Arts in 1970. In a critics' poll of all-time greatest films conducted by the Asian film magazine Cinemaya in 1998, ‘Subarnarekha’ was ranked at No. 11 on the list. In the 2002 Sight & Sound critics' and directors' poll for all-time greatest films, ‘Meghe Dhaka Tara’, one of his great movie, was ranked at No. 231 and ‘Komal Gandhar’ at No. 346 on the list.

Ghatak was not only a film director; he was a film theorist too. His views and commentaries on films have been parts of scholarly studies and researches. As a filmmaker his main concentration was on men and life and specially the day to day struggle of ordinary men. He could never accept the partition of India of 1947 which divided Bengal into two different countries. Ghatak in almost all his film has dealt with this theme.

Film-making was not only art for him. In his opinion it was only a means to the end of serving people, it was only a means of expressing his anger at the sorrows and sufferings of his people.

That’s all for today! Have a good day/ afternoon/evening/night! Namaskar.