Ritwik Ghatak: Between the Burden of Living and the Burden of Ideology Birthday Tribute to a Filmmaker Who Could Never Separate Cinema from Life by Prabuddha Ghosh. There are filmmakers who observe life, and then there are those who carry its wounds within themselves. Ritwik Ghatak belonged to the latter. His cinema was never merely an artistic exercise; it was an intensely personal engagement with a society struggling to survive its own historical contradictions. Born into an age he himself described as one of “troubled times,” Ghatak witnessed the Second World War, the Bengal Famine of 1943, Partition in 1947 and the devastating communal violence that followed. These were not distant historical events for him. They became permanent fractures in his consciousness. For Ghatak, the tragedy of Partition was not simply the division of geographical territory. It was the disintegration of belonging, memory, language and cultural continuity. Having his ancestral home in East Bengal, he...
Echoes of Displacement and Line: The Artistic Odyssey of Jogen Chowdhury by Prabuddha Ghosh Jogen Chowdhury, he honed his foundational skills at the Government College of Art & Craft, Kolkata (1955–1960), later expanding his global perspective through a French Government scholarship at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris (1965–1967). Chowdhury’s professional journey flourished across prestigious roles, serving as an art keeper at Rashtrapati Bhavan and later as a professor and principal at Kala Bhavana, Visva Bharati University in Santiniketan. Renowned for his expressive linework and intricate cross-hatching, Chowdhury utilizes muted earthy tones and dry-brush techniques to portray distorted, contorted human figures that reflect societal decay, vulnerability, and psychological tension. Honored with prestigious accolades like the Lalit Kala Akademi National Award, Kalidas Samman, and Banga Bibhushan, his profound oeuvres bridge classical tradition with modern exp...