Call For Papers Special Section on Ritwik Ghatak: The Visionary of Cinema

The radical potential of melodrama to critique the dominant culture is pressed to high service in RitwikGhatak’s films, which meditate on the central theme of exile and displacement. With its accent on the point of view of woman protagonist, melodrama privileges female subjectivity and locates the gendered violence of patriarchy. In the backdrop of Partition, Ghatak brings multiple contradictions – political, cultural and personal, to the surface, through melodramatic repertoire. Ghatak employs melodrama’s nostalgic mode to address memory and history, trauma and pathos.Ghatak draws upon a combination of myths, traditions, folklore, history and legends, to develop a narrative imbued with multi-layered meanings and extreme emotions.

 Ghatak engages in thematic ritualization, offers tribal perspective and assimilates the soul of Indian narratological tradition in his films. Ghatak’s stylistic devices, including the deployment of non-representational registers – music and sound to heighten the emotions and conflicts, evolve into a unique film language. This paper explores the articulation of protest through melodrama and the mise-en-scene of female suffering giving rise to a resistant narrative of partition and patriarchy in Ghatak’sMeghe Dhaka Tara. The trope of woman as nation, the image of Mother Archetype and the devalorization of “women-victims” bodies in the film will be discussed. In addition, the paper will highlight Ghatak’s project of reclaiming melodrama through restoring its elements to its original constituents

Guest Editor

Ananda Das Gupta

Ananda Das Gupta has been in academics for more than thirty years and his forte is Human Resource Management. He was influenced towards progressive cultural thoughts by his maternal uncle who was the all India general secretary of Indian Peoples Theatre Association  (IPTA) of which Ritwik was an active member.

 

Later, during his college days in Patna, he came across meeting the nephew of Ritwik Ghatak who was a theatre activist. Through Cine Society being formed in Patna a band of youths including Ananda got attracted and involved into it and thus after many more years down the journey the thought of working on Ritwik surfaced.

Currently he is Emeritus Profesor St St Joseph's University Bangalore and Editorial Board Member Philosophy of Management Journal, Springer.

 

.Call for Papers (CFP)

• Deadline for Paper submission: March  2026
• Please submit the papers through the CINEJ Journal portal and select “Ritwik Ghatak: The Visionary of Cinema” section (not the Articles)

For more information please contact Ananda Das Gupta at anandadg06@gmail.com