History, Affect and Memory in Ghatak’s Subarnarekha

Sudha Padmaja Francis

doi:10.5195/cinej.2026.909

History, Affect and Memory in Ghatak’s Subarnarekha

Authors

Sudha Padmaja Francis IIT Palakkad https://orcid.org/0009-0003-0900-9183

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5195/cinej.2026.909

Keywords:

Ritwik Ghatak, Subarnarekha (1965), Partition cinema, Bengali cinema, melodrama, cinematic space, cultural memory, affect, Indian cinema, landscape, montage

Abstract

This article reconsiders Ritwik Ghatak’s Subarnarekha (1965) through the relationships among landscape, melodrama, memory, and the historical aftermath of Partition. Rather than placing the film within a rigid opposition between classical montage and modernist duration, it examines how camera movement, spatial repetition, sound, and narrative coincidence produce an affective experience of history. Close readings of the abandoned wartime airstrip, the Subarnarekha River, railway crossings, and scenes of delayed recognition show how Ghatak binds private suffering to caste hierarchy, displacement, gendered precarity, and the unfulfilled promises of postcolonial nationhood. The article argues that melodramatic coincidence becomes a means of revealing structural violence, while recurring landscapes retain and reactivate personal and collective memory. Ghatak’s epic form thereby complicates the presumed opposition between realism and melodrama and expands how cinema can make historical experience perceptible.

References

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Published

2026-10-15

How to Cite

Padmaja Francis, S. (2026). History, Affect and Memory in Ghatak’s Subarnarekha. CINEJ Cinema Journal, 14(2), 634–657. https://doi.org/10.5195/cinej.2026.909

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Issue

Vol. 14 No. 2 (2026): Fall

Section

Ritwik Ghatak: The Visionary of Cinema

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