Unmechanical: Ritwik Ghatak in 50 Fragments

FIFTY ESSAYS ON ONE OF INDIA’S MOST CONSEQUENTIAL AND CONTROVERSIAL FILM-MAKERS-A MAN UNDERAPPRECIATED IN HIS TIME AND UNDERSTUDIED AT HOME.

Ritwik Ghatak died a broken, ravaged man. Almost every film he made failed at the box office at the time-if they were released at all-and his life and family were in a shambles, his partitioned Bengal was no closer to healing, no rapprochement with the left parties was in sight. But Safdar Hashmi describes the day he died, 6 February 1976, thus: hundreds of people thronged the hospital he lay in, and as the funeral procession began in the afternoon, thousands joined in, singing all the way to the burning ghat.

If he wasn’t feted in his time, Ghatak’s relevance has only grown globally since: the bold innovations of his humanist cinema, the depth of his engagement with the lives of the people and his uncompromising vision for true revolution steeped in the history and culture of the land. And all the while, the mystique that had always surrounded him only swirled more fiercely.

Unflinching and even ruthless, alcoholic and irresponsible, an irrepressible genius, a master of the craft of film-making and a relentless innovator: these fifty essays-by his collaborators and family, academics who study him and writers who admire him-celebrate Ghatak on his centenary through reflections and expressions of love.