During the Osian’s Cinefan Film Festival in Delhi in 2006, a special highlight was the screening of films paying tribute to the great Indian filmmaker Ritwik Ghatak and Hong Kong’s Stanley Kwan. Along with seven of Ghatak’s films, Anup Singh’s Ekti Nadir Naam (The Name of a River) — dedicated to Ghatak — was also screened.
Ghatak’s favourite pupil and renowned filmmaker Mani Kaul was the creative director of the festival. During the event, I had a long conversation with Kaul. He told me, “Even today, I continue to learn from Ritwik-da’s films. He helped me move beyond the neo-realist tradition.” He further added, “Critics often dismissed his work as melodramatic. But Ghatak used melodrama only to transcend it. People of his time failed to understand him.”
Ghatak profoundly influenced an entire generation of Indian filmmakers during his tenure as Professor and Vice Principal at the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), Pune, from 1963 to 1965. The noted filmmaker and theorist Kumar Shahani was another of his favourite students at FTII. Shahani acknowledged that it was Ghatak who first introduced him to the idea of the epic form.
Char Adhyay, Shahani's’s last film, based on Rabindranath Tagore’s novel, explores self-determination and violence in pre-independent India. Shahani told me, “You will find Ritwik da a lot in this movie.”
In the 1970s and 1980s, filmmakers such as Mani Kaul, Kumar Shahani, Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Jahnu Barua, Saeed Mirza, Kundan Shah emerged across India as an alternative to mainstream cinema. All of them were deeply influenced by the humanism and radical vision of Ghatak.
It is often said that genius carries within it a streak of chaos. Ritwik Ghatak was one such genius. When he passed away on February 6, 1976, he was only 51. His works, Ajantrik, Meghe Dhaka Tara, Komal Gandhar, Subarnarekha, and Titash Ekti Nadir Naam remain timeless treasures of Indian cinema.
Born in Rajshahi, now in Bangladesh, Ghatak personally endured the trauma of Partition and his films stand as testaments to displacement and refugee life. The famine and partition of Bengal left an indelible mark on his mind and consciousness. The pain of exile lies at the heart of his cinema; an experience he lived by himself.
In Subarnarekha, the story begins with the tragedy of Partition. Early in the film, a character remarks, “Who here isn’t a refugee?” Ghatak gives the question of exile a new dimension. It is not merely about physical displacement, it is about a deeper search for belonging.
In today’s global village, as the distances of time and space grow ever smaller, our search for identity only intensifies. Ghatak’s films thus remain profoundly relevant and close to our time and society.
At the beginning of his creative journey, Ghatak was associated with the Indian People’s Theatre Association (IPTA). In 1948, he began his acting career in the celebrated play Nabanna by Bijon Bhattacharya and Shambhu Mitra.
During the Osian’s Festival, renowned Malayalam filmmaker Adoor Gopalakrishnan was a jury member. I met him at Siri Fort Auditorium and we sat together for a brief discussion. We spoke about Ghatak. Although Adoor said he was not as close to Ghatak as Mani Kaul or Kumar Shahani, he remembered his teacher with deep respect and noted that Ghatak’s IPTA background and his artistic use of music were central to his cinematic vision.
Few years ago, in an interview with me, Anup Singh, the director of Ekti Nadir Naam, spoke about the epic traditions reflected in Ghatak’s cinema. He told me, “Too often, we are ready to judge a person by their name, or by what he or she wears. We accept what we are told about others as true — the cinema of Ritwik Ghatak questions such unexamined and easy attempts to understand our life.”
A true master lives on through the work of his worthy disciples and this could not be truer in the case of Ritwik Ghatak, whose influence continues to shape Indian cinema decades after his passing.
The birth anniversary of Ritwik Ghatak is a moment to reflect upon his films and the rich legacy he left behind.
