Rendezvous
Ghatak supervised this diploma film made by students at the Film Institute of India.
The Chhau Dance of Purulia
A folk-cultural form, Purulia’s Chhau fuses myth and martial rhythm.
The Question
The film speaks against religious fundamentalism and favours intercommunal harmony.
Where the Padma Flows
This documentary was made in support of Bangladesh Liberation War.
Ritwik Ghatak on documentary filmmaking
Actually, in the truly creative sense, the documentary is an attitude. The truth lies in reality, and the camera is eminently capable and uniquely suited to recording physical reality in all its varied aspects. It becomes a duty and an onus on the artist to record them and present them in an artistic manner.
That is why the documentary is the most exciting and most valid and legitimate form of cinema.
And that is why the borderline between story-film and documentary is broken again and again by all the great artists in all the periods of the history of the cinema.
Lumière’s ‘documentary’ on A Train’s Arrival at the Station or The Practical Joke of the Hose with the Gardener, truly performed the duties of cinema – just as Pather Panchali did. And, in the documentary it is a wrong notion that subjective assessments, generalisation, compression, seeking the essence – these do not play a part. They very much do.
Almost all the great masters of cinema today have made documentaries sometime or other, even in the conventional sense of the term – Resnais, Antonioni, Satyajit, Karel Reisz. Roman Polanski made his famous [Two Men and a]Wardrobe film before he made Knife in the Water which got the Critics Award at Venice. The younger French experimentalists periodically make documentaries between their features – some regularly buzz off to Cuba to make them (Cuba being very much in need of such talents.)
In our country this has not yet developed. There are the economic factors – a generally low standard of living and lack of enlightened sponsorship.
But potentially, India is one of the richest countries to be exploited by the camera – and almost all of it still virgin. Some foreigners have come and done some work (Arne Sucksdorff spent some years in the country and made two films on Kashmir and The Flute and The Arrow).
Then, the American television people are coming more and more nowadays to cover different aspects of the Indian scene. These, along with the efforts of Films Division directors – some of whose works are really exciting – are not adequate by themselves.
Here, I think, is a vacuum which can be filled up by the big commercial houses. I think some serious efforts have been there, but judging from the results, it appears that not much headway has been made.
Though I have no direct experience of such things, I may venture to surmise about the difficulties of turning out worthwhile documentary films – of course, from the point of view of the filmmaker.
The first thing is the question of audience. Creative documentaries of feature or semi-feature length have absolutely no chance of public circulation in India, except as a miracle. And I don’t think the commercial houses should aim at such audiences.
So-called ‘prestige’ films made for specialised audiences generally fall between two stools.
The audience to be aimed at by such sponsors should be the major international film festivals. And the aim should be the top prizes. That way lies the creation of goodwill and development of public relations. A film winning applause in such a festival is bound to create interest in any country of the world, and such a film, for its cultural value, is bound to be an object of discussion amongst the right set of people in society in those countries.
This aim, and a clear idea about the audience to be approached (via festivals) are half the battle won.
And such films should not and cannot cost very much. The documentary films that are being sponsored by such concerns are being paid for by fantastic amounts of money anyway. With much less expenditure much better and longer films can easily be turned out.
The next difficulty that comes to my mind is the method of sponsorship and the way of handling the filmmaking proper.
Ritwik Ghatak, ‘Cinema and I’ (Ritwik Memorial Trust, 1987)
Rendezvous
Director: Rajendra Nath Shukla
India 1965
13 mins
Digital 4K (restoration)
Courtesy of Film and Television Institute of India
The Chhau Dance of Purulia Puruliar Chhou Nritya
Director: Ritwik Ghatak
India 1970
13 mins
Digital 4K (restoration)
The Question Yeh Kyun
Director: Ritwik Ghatak
India 1970
20 mins
Digital 4K (restoration)
Where the Padma Flows Durbar Gati Padma
Director: Ritwik Ghatak
India 1971
22 mins
Digital 4K (restoration)
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Programme notes and credits compiled by Sight and Sound and the BFI Documentation Unit
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