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Calcutta 1981

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Jean Racine

Bibliographies, Filmography

A Selected Filmography on Calcutta

Barun Ray

Full text

The first film

Jamaibabu, 1931. Director: Kalidapa DASS.

The first Bengali silent film: a 30 mn slapstick comedy. A man comes to Calcutta to visit his family and gets lost in the streets of the city.

Calcutta in Satyajit RAY's films

Apur Sansar, 1959. (The World of Apu)

The third part of the "Apu Trilogy". In his poor attic in Calcutta, Apu spends his Student days, gets married and takes up a clerical job. When his wife dies in childbirth in her village, Apu refusing for years to see his son, retreats into loneliness in the city.

Mahanagar, 1963. (The Big City)

The portrayal of a middle class family in Calcutta: wage earners both, husband and wife, and slaves of the system. They finally come close to each other when, jobless, they move among the crowd in the sad gloom in the Calcutta evening.

Pratidwandi, 1970. (Siddhartha and the City)

From Sunil Gangopadhyay's novel: the problem of the educated young trapped in a limbo between the old and the new: A young medical Student, forced to give up his studies when his father dies, is confronted with a ruthless competitive job hunting existence in Calcutta.

Seemabaddha, 1971. (Company Limited)

From Sankar's novel: a tale of a rising executive in the corporation rat-race, or how the hero shakes off almost all his middle-class values to become a Director in a Calcutta Company.

Jana Aranya, 1975. (The Middleman)

A portrait of the Contemporary realities of big city life. Hunting hopelessly for a worthy job, Somnath ends up inevitable as the corrupted wheeler-dealer of the title.

Calcutta in Mrinal SEN's films

Neel Akasher Neechey, 1959. (Under the Blue Sky)

The story of a poor Chinese salesman living a dreary life in Calcutta in the early thirties when both India and China were fighting Imperial expansion in different political equations.

Akash Kusum, 1965. (Up in the Clouds)

Trying for success in the competitive Calcutta business world, a young man desperately tires to break the wealth barrier by marriage.

Interview, 1971.

The first of Sen’s Calcutta trilogy covering his more overtly political phase. A young middle-class man loses a job opportunity because he cannot obtain the required western dress for the interview with the company executives.

Calcutta 71, 1972.

Agit-prop and resolutely non-naturalist, the film recounts five separate incidents spread over forty years with the common theme of poverty and exploitation in Calcutta.

Padatik, 1973. (The Guerilla Fighter)

The third part of the Calcutta trilogy. A political extremist breaks out of police custody and is sheltered by a woman who has herself defied society's conventions by living independently.

Parashuram, 1978. (The Man with the Axe)

Having left his village for a new life in the city, the hero becomes one of the thousands of Calcutta's pavement dwellers.

Ekdin Pratidin, 1979. (And Quite Rolls the Dawn)

The decline and fall of a petite bourgeoisie family living in a ramshackle tenement of rambling old house in Central Calcutta.

Calcutta in the New Directors' Films

Dooratwa, 1978. (The Distance). Director: Buddhadeb DASGUPTA

How a radical college lecturer, during the politically disturbed days in the seventies in Calcutta, tempers all his radicalism to cold conservatism when it comes to a question of personal values.

Neem Annapurna, 1979. (Bitter Morsel). Director: Buddhadeb DASGUPTA

The cursed lot of Calcutta's common people condemned to endure harrowing experiences despite the promise of a rosy future held out by each succeeding government since Independence.

36 Chowringhee Lane, 1981. Director: Aparna SEN

With the absence of abiding relationships and faced with feeling of rootlessness, many Anglo-Indians of Calcutta left India. Miss Stoneheim, an old lady teacher exploited by a young couple, did not....

Chokh, 1982. (The Eye). Director: Utpalendu CHAKRABORTY

A labour leader of a factory in Calcutta was condemned to death, and gave his eyes to the hospital with an instruction that the eyes should be donated only to a blind worker. A conflict ensues when a business magnate wants them.

Yaseener Kolkatta, 1982. (Yashin's Calcutta). Director: D.P. BHATTACHARYA

The dreams of Yashin, a poor tea boy in a shabby cafe in Calcutta. From Subash Mukhopadhyay's novel.

A few documentary films on Calcutta (a very short list)

Hari S.DASGUPTA: Durgapuja in Calcutta.

Saikai BHATTACHARYA: Calcutta: a social-cultural scenario.

Purnendu PATTREA: Kalighat Pat. On the traditional folk paintings of Kalighat.

Ali Rasheed KHAN: A seventh Man. On Calcutta Muslims.

Sashi ANAND: Man versus Man: On the rickshaw-pullers of Calcutta.

Georg LECHNER: Tabla Calcutta: Glimpses of Calcutta through the eyes of a German.

Pierre AMADO: Les fêtes de Durga à Calcutta: Durgapuja as seen by a French Indologist who spent years in Calcutta.

and of course:

Louis MALLE: Calcutta (1970). The best-known foreign film on the city, still banned in India.

Informative films made by the CMDA up to 1983

From the statement prepared by courtesy of Mr.S.C.BASU, Director, Public Relations, C.M.D.A.

1. Action for Calcutta series

17 films B.W., 35 mm, form 200 to 2000 ft. English version except films no 14, 16, 17. The series deals with the various programmes implemented by the C.M.D.A, such as: waterlogging and drainage projects (no 8), health programme (no 10), traffic and transportation programme (n° 11), C.M.D.A's work in progress (n° 12), road development (n° 13,16), caule ressettlement (n° 17),etc...

2. "Present and future Calcutta" series

5 films B.W., 35 mm, 2000 ft, all in Bengali. English version for no (waterlogging) and no 2 (traffic and transportation). No 5 is on Sealdah flyover.

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