The rest is personal...
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| Sumit Ghosh |
Sumit Ghosh is an affable character. Although he joined the Film & TV Institute
of India a year after I did, we graduated together, as he was in the editing
course, which was then just two years. For a year or so, he was even my neighbor
at the institute hostel.
I had requested him to support me in arranging a few
screenings of ‘Haal-e-Kangaal’ in Kolkata. Referring to the dates that I had chalked
out he had mailed me, ‘Oh, why did you plan during those days?’ He was worried
that we could not meet, as he was to go to the North-East for a workshop. But
before going he had put me on to filmmaker Pradipta Bhattacharyya.
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| Pradipta Bhattacharyya |
Pradipta Bhattacharyya had made “Bakita Byaktigato’ (The Rest is Personal),
a film in Bengali language that is not only refreshing in it’s form and content
but it had also broken away from the conventions of the ‘realism’ debate that
Indian cinema has gloriously clung on to, over the years, ever since Satyajit Ray.
It also reminded me of New Theater’s ‘Vidyapathi’ and I thought it belonged to
that line of Indian film tradition.
Pradipta and his friends run an organization called ‘Kolkata
Shorts’ where they have shown films in the remote areas of Kolkata. Bakita
Byaktigato had found an audience
like this. On the 14th of December 2015, a screening of ‘Haal-e-Kangaal
(The Bankrupts) was held in Kolkata under the aegis of ‘Kolkata Shorts’. The
kind of excitement the screening generated was one of its kind and is the best
I have had till date.
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| Discussion at 'Kolkata Shorts' |
The post screening
discussion that we had, dealt with a lot of issues – about the kind of choices that
was made in the making of the film, to the kind of audiences that it could be
shown to. We also had an animated argument about the nature of Post Modernism,
which one member of the audience, to my amusement, was convinced that the film
made a case for.
Most of the audiences
either were film buffs and short film makers. I did mention my ‘man ki baat’ to
this audience that I would want the film to be shown to an audience who are not
necessarily from a film background. After the film an excited Pradipta asked me
if he can screen the film in his village – the audience of which would be the
general public. I readily agreed.
The next day, there
was a screening at The Satyajit Ray Film & TV Institute of India (SRFTII);
I have to thank my good friends Prasanjit Ghosh and Santhi Ranjan Mujumdar for
that – both of whom are teaching there. Most of the teaching staff at SRFTII are
from the FTII, so a film on film school graduates was easily related to,
especially by some of the staff, all contemporaries from my film school days.
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| The screening at SRFTII |
Non mainstream film
screenings would mean that there is no uniform quality in those projections;
for the projectors may differ from screening to screening. In many cases, the
screening spaces might not even be entirely dark. One is mentally prepared for
such things. But the projection at SRFTII was by far one of the best projections
of the film Haal-e-Kangaal. The other one was at the Manipal School of
Communication.
I should say that
the attendance count was below what I had expected at SRFTII; maybe the ongoing
‘Sexual Harassment’ case and the palpable tensions that it generated albeit simmering
underneath the calm exterior, had played a part in it. Or maybe, in an age
where World Cinema is easily accessible and available on a lap top or on a mobile
phone, the collective viewing of an Indian no budget independent film is
not that good a proposition.
I did miss out of a couple of screenings like the one at the
Roopkala Academy; they had their student exercises during my visit. But a few
of Roopkala students had come to the screening arranged by Pradipta. Pradipta
himself is an alumnus of Roopkala Academy. Jhadavpur University is another
possible screening venue.
It was good to have made new friends in Kolkata and to have
caught up with old ones like Shyamol Karmakar, Abdul Razzak, Debashish Ghoshal, Pankaj Seal, Pradip Sarkar and Monish Das. I was especially pleased to have met Prasanjit Ghosh,
who teaches production at SRFTII. He had discovered the value of wearing a suit
when I was there and he was looking like Sharmaji, our Production teacher at FTII.
If I plan another screening schedule in Kolkata one of the ulterior
motives would also be to catch up with Sumit Ghosh. It has been ages since we
sat together for a chat.
If you want to screen this film in your colleges, film clubs or even offices
please contact HERE.
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