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Cloud-Capped Star

Special Programs in Focus

CountryIndia
Production Year1959
Running Time122min
Format35mm

Program Note

Calcutta of the 1950s. Turned into refugees by the partition of Bengal after independence in 1951, a middle class family lives a precarious existence. The eldest daughter, Nita, is the only real breadwinner. Her elder brother, Shankar, dreams only of music; the younger sister, Gita, and brother, Montu, are still students; the father a school teacher who has to give up his job when he collapses one day. Nita′s sole solace is Sanat, the man she loves... Her world disintegrates when she discovers that Sanat is seeing Gita secretly; Montu leaves school and takes up a factory job; Shankar goes away to Bombay. After Gita and Sanat get married, Nita continues to support her parents, but life has taken its toll and she finds she has tuberculosis. Shankar returns successful from Bombay, determined to free Nita of her burdens. He takes her to a sanatorium in the mountains she has always longed to see. As he brings her news of hope in the shape of Gita and Sanat′s growing child, the hills echo with Nita′s cry "1 want to live" at the moment we know she is dying. (Aruna Vasudev)

Director

Ritwik Ghatak

Gathak’s first film Nagarik Predates Ray’s Pather Panchali by three years but it is diffilcut to imageone two more dissimilar directors. Gathak was deeply steeped in Indian classical and popular culture with Marxism as his political Philosphy. He used melodrama in a highly sophisticated manner and context and was aggressive about it, declaring ’melodrama is my birthright’. His family was driven out of East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) at the partitin of India. The sense of loss and the nostalgia for Bengal’s green plains and rivers, permeated his work. His political allegiance came from the tragedy he saw of people turned into refugees by political events. Writing short stories and plays, acting and directing in the theatre, becoming a memeber of the Indian People’s Theatre Associtian (the cultural wing of the Communist Party) finally took him into making films as a way of reaching wider audiences

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