India
The success of his film Calcutta 71 (1972), remarked director Mrinal Sen, was not due to “cinematic excellence,” but “more because of the time in which it was made and released.”[1] Sen was right. Calcutta 71 did not reap profits in the box office. In this it was much like the two other films that were part of Sen’s Calcutta trilogy, Interview (1971) and Padatik [The guerilla fighter] (1973).
“Venice,” writes Adrian Durham Stokes at the opening of his 1945 study of the city, “excels in blackness and whiteness; water brings commerce between them.”[1] This is a confident blasé opening gambit characteristic of the period and of this Faber and Faber contracted writer earlier heralded by Ezra Pound as one of the “only important writers” living.[2] Venice bothered Stokes throughout his writing and viewing life, yet Venice’s, and other, problematic whitenesses disappe
This summer, as I was wrapping up my dissertation and packing my boxes in upstate New York, I started watching Satyajit Ray’s Jai Baba Felunath (The Elephant God, 1979) after what felt like a lifetime. The film is based on a novel from Ray’s own children’s detective series featuring the celebrated Bengali private investigator Prodosh C. Mitter, aka Felu-da (“da” being an affectionate honorific for elder brother).