Particle.news
Download on the App Store

Ritwik Ghatak at 100: Centenary Spurs Restorations, Screenings and Fresh Scholarship

His cinema’s focus on displacement and identity feels newly urgent during this revival.

Overview

  • West Bengal has hosted near-daily centenary programs across cities, towns and villages, with scholar Sanjay Mukhopadhyay touring to speak on Ghatak.
  • Mukhopadhyay and filmmaker Goutam Ghose are collaborating on a state-backed volume of essays to be published by the West Bengal government.
  • The Kolkata International Film Festival, running November 6–13, will honor the centenary with screenings of six Ghatak features.
  • Restorations undertaken in the United States and the United Kingdom, along with new dissertations, signal renewed academic and archival attention.
  • Ghatak’s eight features—especially the Partition trilogy—won critical admiration but little commercial success, and his themes remain current as debates persist over political uses of his work.