RITWIK GHATAK AT 100: NEW INTERVENTIONS

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RITWIK GHATAK AT 100: NEW INTERVENTIONS is a centenary tribute to one of the most original and pioneering filmmakers that India has ever produced, in the year of his birth centenary. Organized by the Kolkata Partition Museum Trust (KPMT), it will be held at the Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute (SRFTI), Kolkata, on 6 February 2026. It is open to all and will commence at 6 pm, at the Preview Theatre within the campus.

Ritwik Ghatak hailed from East Bengal and was forced to migrate on the other side of the border to West Bengal at the time of the Partition of 1947. The trauma of that displacement never left him, and Partition became an obsessive subject with him as a filmmaker, of which his trilogy – ‘Meghe Dhaka Tara’ (1960), ‘Komal Gandhar’ (1961) and ‘Subarnarekha’ (1965) – is most well-known. As a Partition Museum Project, KPM has featured Ghatak’s work in its programs several times before – as part of a Partition Film Fest at Jadunath Bhavan in 2019 (where ‘Komol Gandhar’ was screened), and in a Partition-themed Art Exhibition, ‘The Legacy of Loss’ at KCC in 2021 (where one of the participating artists drew inspiration from his films to create her graphic art). This time, we are holding a special, with two components – a lecture and a panel discussion.

Three new interventions on the life and art of Ritwik Ghatak – an anthology, a novel and a play – will be the subject of the panel discussion on the filmmaker.

‘Unmechanical: Ritwik Ghatak in 50 Fragments', edited by Shamya Dasgupta, is a rare anthology that brings together a wide range of essays by and on Ghatak, including several translations of articles and interviews from old Bangla magazines. The book has already received a lot of critical attention and been discussed in many venues across the country.

'Letters From the Asylum: Binoy Majumdar and Ritwik Ghatak' is a novel by Maitreyee B. Chowdhury that will be published later this year. It is very generous of both the writer and the publisher to allow it to be publicly discussed before the book is out.

'Meghe Dhaka Ghatak' is the Bengali theatre group Chetana’s tribute to Ghatak, with veteran actor-director Sujan Neel Mukherjee in the title role. The play is running successfully, with several shows scheduled for February.

The panel discussion is the second part of the program on the 6th. It will begin with a lecture by Prof. Sanjoy Mukhopadhyay on Ghatak’s Partition trilogy. Prof. Mukhopadhyay has spent decades engaging with Ghatak - writing/ teaching/ publicly speaking on him; it will thus be a privilege to listen to him on the filmmaker.

6th February 2026 has a double significance: it is the 50th death anniversary of Ghatak, in a year that is commemorating his birth centenary. The KPM Trust is grateful to SRFTI for agreeing to be the venue of our event on such a special day.