Author: John W Hood
Publisher: Orient Longman
Year: 2005
Language: English
Pages: 224
ISBN/UPC (if available): 8125028021
Description
Buddhadeb Dasgupata has established himself as one of India’s finest filmmakers and won international acclaim for his thirteen feature films. His works are characterized by technical excellence and artistic beauty and are noted for their extraordinary originality in both style and substance. The themes of his films are as varied as they are many, but there is an abiding concern for the individual in isolation or alienation, for the misfit, the rebel, and the lonely. The films cherish pity as creative emotion and value innocence and simplicity as constructive virtues. Heroism sometimes consists in honesty and dedication to a cause, although many of Dasgupta’s heroes, given his profound sense of realism, are sadly obliged to bow to circumstances.
In this work, every one of the feature films is discussed in detail-the films about the vulnerability of dedication, the struggle against poverty, the integrity of the modern day artist, notions of sanity and insanity and falling out of history, the transcending of human society and its various constraints on creativity, and the triumph of beauty over the ugliness of violence. Dasgupta is also a highly esteemed poet in Bengali, and there is a concluding chapter on the relationship between his poetry and his cinema.
Contents
AUTHOR’S NOTE
INTRODUCTION
ONE
Dreams for New Seasons
TWO
The Frailty of Commitment
THREE
In Pursuit of defilement
FOUR
Troupers, Tigers and Transistors
FIVE
But Nothing Sts the Same
SIX
The Gilded Cage and the Lonely Sky
SEVEN
Insensibility and the Power of Red Beetles
EIGHT
And Even the Stones did Groan
NINE
Life at the throw of a Dice
TEN
The Dream Machine
ELEVEN
The Poet as Filmmaker
Filmograpy
Bibliography