Bengali Cinema Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Bengali cinema has emerged strongly in the late 2000s after hitting a low in the 1990s and the early 2000s. In the contemporary media discourse it's seen as 'bold', 'audacious' and 'willing to take risk'. So, is this a new era for Tollywood? This 2013 newspaper article attempts to read something which is central to this transformation, but not discussed. The piece focuses on how Bengali cinema during this period brings an idea of a film audience and taste discourse which are relatively new, and how these changes have caused an interruption in the imagination of the binary of the popular and the parallel.

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- Audience Studies, Bengali Cinema, Film Culture

This essay looks at the cinema of Rituparno Ghosh from the vantage point of urban cultural studies. Ghosh was at a forefront of a new cinema in the mid-1990s that purportedly ‘brought the Bengali middle classes back to the theatre’. Under the rubric of this claim which is verifiably true, lies the understated idea: who or what was the nature of this new middle class and how in the initial years of globalization did they relate to the imperatives of cultural and global capital. One obvious critical paradigm in the early cinema of Ghosh is its internality, a parcelling out of larger conceptions of space and place into metonymic, drawing-room dramaturgy, a chambering of orchestrated relationships away from the politically volatile, lived, identifiable vestiges of the city of Calcutta, where the films are apparently based. This article hopes to add to contemporary debates about the de-politicization of the middle classes by looking at Ghosh’s cinema as a major contributor to middle class’s conscious, cultural self-fashioning under globalization and the construction of their spatial and locational aesthetics. It concludes by looking into how Ghosh’s films severely challenge notions of space around the idea of the ‘cinematic city’, and how that ultimately relates to his assumed position as a feminist filmmaker.

- by sayandeb chowdhury
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- Film Studies, Cinema, Bengali Cinema, Cinema and the City

Fairly recently in 2018, Section 377 of the Indian Constitution was scrapped by the Supreme Court of India which criminalized homosexuality. Quite unfortunately, it took India almost 160 years to abolish a law introduced by the British during the colonial rule. LGBTQ issues are comparatively new in India and to a great extent is still considered scandalous, controversial and unacceptable. Literary works are a great medium to normalize the issue in society but is extremely difficult to achieve in India, at least not in any near future. With so little opportunity of getting some basic primary education, this level of knowledge cannot be achieved and will also be deemed scandalous and highly objectionable. The only other medium available, and perhaps more popular, is media, more specifically television/movies. Visual images and motion pictures are more welcoming to most people than books. Contemporary Indian Parallel or New Wave Cinema have begun portraying the lives and voicing the issues of alternative genders which, for long, has been suppressed. The paper focuses on the authentic representation of LGBTQ community in Indian Parallel Cinema and its audience reception, how they portray these issues to educate the audience and how have they been received by the spectators. Focusing on selected films of Rituparno Ghosh, the paper investigates the films that question the beliefs, perspectives and misconceptions regarding the issues and work on how better ways they can be portrayed in cinema to leave an impact on the spectators, thus pushing towards a healthier society.

- by Darshana Chakrabarty
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- Cultural Studies, Gender Studies, Film Studies, South Asian Studies
- by Kaustav Bakshi
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- Sociology, Film Studies, Postcolonial Studies, Queer Theory
- by jagori bandyopadhyay
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- Colonialism, Bengali Literature, Bengali Cinema, Representation of Others

While Satyajit Ray’s Calcutta trilogy is often studied for the
manner in which he uses the cinematic media to depict urbanization and its discontents, Mrinal Sen’s trilogy is contextualized within the filmmaker’s leftist politics. In discussing the cinematic idiom of the Calcutta trilogies, Ray’s and Sen’s use of formal strategies, identified as integral to international cinematic movements like the French New
Wave, emerge as a point of departure. However, this article argues that Ray’s and Sen’s adaptation, rejection, and modification of such strategies remain intertwined with their attempts to historically trace the world in which they and their characters lived.

- by Torsa Ghosal
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- Film Theory, South Asian Studies, Bengali Cinema, Satyajit Ray

For more than a month even the most atheists of Bengal have been praying for the recovery of the beloved legend Soumitra Chatterjee, hoping for a miracle. People's heart skipped a beat when on 15th November 2020, they received the news of the demise of the iconic personality, a news which they have been dreading to hear. Bengalis all over the world felt an insuperable sense of loss, a vacuum that is unbearable. Soumitra Chatterjee is a symbol of all the qualities that a progressive Bengali should encompass but is failing due to the hollow imitation of modernization of the west. He showed us the value of nourishing and respecting our own traditions and culture, yet have an insatiable zeal to know more, to embrace new ideas, have an open mind for liberal thoughts and, above all, faith in humanity. In spite of numerous personal disturbances including physical and mental health issues, he proved to every Bengali, every Indian at large, how to live a rich life. This article is a small attempt to capture Soumitra Chatterjee’s deep personality that goes beyond his role as an actor. Intentionally rejecting the path of stardom that every actor seeks, he chose a path less travelled, less popular, and perhaps that indeed made a lot of difference. With his collaboration with Ray, Chatterjee participated in the Indian New Wave films that gave Bengal a global recognition. The article is a peek into vast aesthetic spirit that is not just restricted to motion pictures. Bengal did not just lose a great actor that brought realism into fictional films, but also lost a gifted painter, a remarkable poet, a charming elocutionist, a brilliant thespian and, above all, a noble human.

- by Darshana Chakrabarty
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- Film Studies, Film History, Bengali Literature, Bengali Cinema

In this paper, the patriarchal politics involved in remarrying the widow in colonial Bengal is delved into with special reference to Rituparno Ghosh's highly successful cinematic adaptation of Rabindranath Tagore's novel 'Chokher Bali'. The paper then shifts to the filmmaker's attempt at reversing the 'gaze' of popular cinema, and examines how successfully or not so successfully he could address the issue. Is a 'female' or 'queer' gaze at all possible? Is it possible not to subscribe to the patriarchal language of cinema?

- by Kaustav Bakshi
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- Cultural Studies, Gender Studies, Feminist Theory, Film Studies
- by Deb Kamal Ganguly
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- Cinematic Space, Intersubjectivity, Bengali Literature, Bengali Cinema

Epitome of filmmaking in Indian subcontinent, Satyajit Ray has made films showing life in a realistic way. It is said that he was largely influenced by the Italian neorealist films. Ray had his own way of portraying life struggle of general people metaphorically relating the plot with the unrestful political and social context of the then India. A versatile Ray played with the psychology of characters, relations among several characters, music, dialogues to portray the reality in guise of fiction. Film critics have argued that behind Ray's way of storytelling there was the influence of the renowned Ray family who were the Brahmos. 'Hirak Rajar Deshe' a fantasy movie released in 1980, most probably the less analyzed movie by Satyajit Ray. Some scholars have seen the movie merely a reflection of Ray's thoughts for entertaining the child audiences. But if we go through his other films and the way Ray plays with societal problems, we will find out that in this movie class struggle and a satire has been set by the portrayal of ruling king to those ruling administration never thinking about the betterment of the mass people of country. The film 'Hirak Rajar Deshe' is a text having numerous subtexts lying on it regarding the fight between totalitarian administrative system and debilitated common people. The textual analysis of this film will be based on semiotics and Marx's theory of class struggle and capitalism. The analysis will be dealing with the facts how Ray has portrayed the cruelty of each imperious administration system, corruption and ruthless policies for imbibing mass people , hypocrisy and two faced nature of the ruling class , last but not the least giving the message that every autocratic and oppressing ruling class have to face the destruction if mass people fight back utilizing their will power.

- by Poroma Shome
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- Semiotics, Marxism, Capitalism, Bengali Cinema

Horror films, since its inception, is one of the most popular and predominant cinematic genres of cinema. Over the years, and in major film-industries of the world, it became one of the proven revenue earning genres. Indian Bengali film-industry (aka Tollywood) is also no exception to this. Several noted Bengali film-makers, since the mid of last century, have profoundly contributed to enrich this cinematic genre. The major Bengali horror film conventionally generates from the eminent Bengali literature. In recent years, the number of Bengali horror movies has also increased with the growing audience base. The main focus of this paper is to identify the impact of the contemporary horror movies on the (Indian) Bengali audience and the domestic film market. We are going to conduct exploratory research to signify the emphasis of our study. This unique research study project is one of a kind in the history of Bengali film-study. The research will assist the future directors and producers of Tollywood in expanding their domestic audience base with potential Bengali horror films.

- by bappa maji and +1
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- Horror Film, Bengali Cinema, Bengali Language and Literature, Bengali Film

In this article we introduce the queer Bengali auteur Rituparno Ghosh (1961–2013),who had a significant role in reviving the Bengali film industry that was going through a dark phase for a little more than a decade. As an iconic feminist film-maker and
queer cultural figure, Ghosh has been an influential icon within Bengal and more widely in India and the diasporas. In seeking to examine his vast oeuvre of work we focus on its various elements. First, we examine Ghosh’s feminist position, and how he shocked his middle-class audience through his transgressive discourses. Second, we investigate the influence and inspiration he received from figures such as Satyajit Ray and Rabindranath Tagore. We argue that Tagore’s sensibility and philosophy imbued all his films. In doing this he was also uncritically referencing the other great Bengali film-maker Satyajit Ray. Third, an examination of Ghosh is incomplete without referencing his uninhibited performance of queerness both in his films and in the public domain. Over here we look at his final queer film trilogy but also the impact he left on Calcutta’s LGBT community. Finally, this article ends by focusing on Ghosh’s legacy on other Bengali film-makers.

- by Sangeeta Datta and +2
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- Film Studies, Postcolonial Studies, Queer Theory, Bengali Cinema

The first half of the twentieth century saw the emergence of popular cultural practices that would define the sub-national differential of ‘Bengal’ within the larger Indian nation. One of the constituents of this differential was 1930s modern screen dance, performed by stars from the ‘cultured’ society. The most notable of them was Sadhona Bose – granddaughter of the social reformer Keshub Chandra Sen – who went on to become one of the first known dancing stars of Bengal. Bose’s Bengali Modern Dance – which claimed distinction from previous dances performed on the stage, dance-forms of silent cinema (both of which were considered undignified) and the neo-classical dances of the national-revivalist project – was central to her stardom. Through a study of Bose’s personal history and dance choreographies on screen, this article underscores the differential ‘Bengali-ness’ of Bose’s dancer persona. The article argues that the modern eclecticism of film dance created a space for Bose to negotiate her regional/Bengali subjectivity even while fulfilling the historicist demands of a hegemonic nationalism. It goes beyond the scope of the respectability discourse that often mires a female star and instead focuses on the nuances of dance forms and choreographies to locate her within the larger framework of dance culture and a regional modernism.

- by Pritha Chakrabarti
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- Film Studies, Dance Studies, Film History, Bengali Cinema

Through the filmic lens of West Bengali director Satyajit Ray’s masterpiece The Big City (Mahanagar 1963), this article focuses on the symbolic meaning of the bra in postcolonial India. It reveals the ways in which the semi-hidden bra in the film functions as a contested site of patriarchal Indian modernity versus Euro-Western modernity and, in the style of neorealist cinema, a utopia of postcolonial and postnational feminine agency. Through textual analysis, the article delves into the influences of Italian neorealist cinema on Ray’s aesthetic choices and compares power, dress and femininity across western and non-western contexts. It articulates cultural similarities and differences and how dream-like cinematic narratives of everyday practices of power dressing provide a window into neoliberal performativity and utopian ambitions for feminine agency during periods of modernization and change.

- by Dr Lipi Begum
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- Postcolonial Feminism, Bengali Cinema, Italian neorealist cinema, Fashion and Film

During the 1930s, one of the significant factors that strengthened the connection between Bengali literature and film was the emergence of certain key figures who straddled overlapping roles as author-screenwriter-director, frequently adapting their own literary works and reframing the contentious 'authorship issue' that arises between writer and filmmaker. By focusing on three such figures-Premankur Atorthy (1890-1964), Sailajananda Mukhopadhyay (1901-1976) and Premendra Mitra (1904-1988)-this essay examines the manner in which self-adaptations served to transfer the power of the literary author to the nascent cinematic auteur, particularly through the intermediary process of screenwriting. The essay also draws attention to the practice of film novelisations that was mobilised since the mid-1940s by Mitra and others like Jyotirmoy Roy and Panchugopal Mukhopadhyay, where novels were written based on cinematic works, akin to French cinéromans and contrary to 'author-less' novelisations by ghostwriters. In subsequent years, film novels were written by director Hemen Gupta, writers Tarashankar Bandopadhyay, Shaktipada Rajguru and Kalkut, which brings to light a largely unexplored dimension of the relationship between Bengali film and literature.

- by Priyanjali Sen
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- Screenwriting, South Asia, Film Adaptation, Film History

As part of the recent worldwide cinematographic trend in adapting children’s fantasy and adventure stories into films, this article offers critical insight into contemporary West Bengali film industry’s reworking of this trend in its 2013 cinematic adaptation of Chander Pahar (1937) by the Bengali novelist Bibhutibhusan Bandapadhyay (1894–1950). I argue that in this adaptation the filmmaker deliberately expands on the author’s original vision of the intricacies of race relations. The film’s staging of the fateful encounter of Bengal with Africa is grounded on a common history of the past between India and Africa linked by migration and settlement and of more contemporary large-scale ventures in commerce and investment. A comparative analysis of Chander Pahar from fiction to film will shed light on the strategic shifts in Indian-African relations. The film’s updated vision of the growing affiliations between Africa and India is not only influenced by the impact of the Indian diaspora on the Indian economy but also by India’s changing role as an aspiring economic and political powerhouse.

- by Dr Mahruba T . Mowtushi
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- Africa, Bengali Cinema, Adaptation (Film Studies)
- by Kerstin B Andersson
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- Anthropology, Bengali Cinema, Satyajit Ray, Cinema of Satyajit Ray

This photo essay argues that Rituparno Ghosh’s phenomenal stardom as a queer icon in Bengal can be appreciated by analysing his influence on the Bengali stage in terms of queering it. It examines a few plays produced in the years following Ghosh’s sudden demise in May 2013 and tries to trace in them Ghosh’s politics and aesthetics, particularly the influence of two of his celebrated queer films, Arekti Premer Golpo (2010) and Chitrangada: a crowning wish (2012). Both these films had extensively deployed theatrical techniques and tropes, which, as I argue, in turn inspired several plays that followed, underlining an exchange between two popular art forms and their engagement with same-sex desires and divergent sexual identities. Based on interviews with playwrights, actors, filmmakers, theatre critics, and images, sourced from persons and organizations who had been associated with the filmmaker, the article seeks to establish the uniqueness of Ghosh’s iconism which has shaped and inspired queer lives and art in Bengal.

- by Kaustav Bakshi
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- Gender Studies, Queer Studies, Performing Arts, Sex and Gender
- by Arka Chattopadhyay
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- Bengali Literature, Cinema, Bengali Cinema, Bengali (বাংলা)

This paper makes an attempt to understand the stardom of the Bengali film-maker and actor Aparna Sen, who has been associated with the industry for 55 years. We argue that Sen's star persona is based on a 10 polysemic structure, to borrow Richard Dyer's term, which comes from the multiple roles she has played in her career. Achieving a local stardom through her work as an actor in Bengali popular cinema, she went on to acquire international fame through the films she made. Besides, as the editor of an immensely popular Bengali women's magazine, Sen became 15 a cultural commentator through her columns and also played an active part, through the magazine, in entering into dialogue with her readers on diverse issues such as communalism and sexuality rights. As a socially conscientious critic who has participated in several humanitarian and political causes, Sen emerged as a figure of trust and reliance for her fans 20 and even her staunchest critics. The paper analyses the construction of her stardom, based on a series of interviews that both authors conducted with Aparna Sen over a period of time, interviews with a cross section of her fans, alongside an analysis of her media presence and finally the films she made and acted in.

- by Rohit K Dasgupta and +1
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- Queer Studies, Feminist Theory, Ethnography, Queer Theory

This essay is a critical genealogy of Bengali cinema roughly between 1955 and 1965, as the story unfolded in the pages of Filmfare, the preeminent mainstream cinema periodical in India. It locates the question of Bengali cinema in a greater textualization of a burgeoning Indian film in the world. The account covers three lines of vision, in terms of how Bombay, as film capital, was looking to Calcutta to supply a literaryreformist guidance to an emerging national form, how Calcutta was conversing with Europe and America in a manner that almost totally bypassed the pan-Indian scenario, and how the west was also frequently looking at the cinematic universe of Satyajit Ray and his peers without any necessary refractive mediation by an all-India prism. Along the way, the essay also revisits crucial moments in the history of the Bengali film industry, both in terms of its commercial and artistic accomplishments as well as its failures to set up regular lines of exchange with other major industries like Bombay and Madras, as well as neighbours like Orissa, Assam, Burma, and what eventually became the independent country of Bangladesh.

- by Anustup Basu
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- Bengali Cinema, Indian Cinema, Modern Indian History and Politics

Through a reading of Satyajit Ray's iconic 1964 film Charulata as a contemplation on the medium of cinema, this article re-visits the concept of "the cinema-effect" central to Ashish Rajadhyaksha's 2009 book 'Indian Cinema in the Time of... more

- by Jenson Joseph
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- Media Studies, Film Studies, Vilem Flusser, Bengali Cinema

In this article, I attempt to understand the emergence of a new form of
masculinity, class character and gendered bodies of Bengali film heroes
during the 1980s and 1990s. The article reads the industrial, technological and aesthetic determinants of this figuration of action heroes in the 1980s–1990s and demonstrates how through this figuration, the representations of class in popular Bengali cinema attained a complex phase.

- by spandan bhattacharya
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- Technology, Southeast Asian Studies, Film Studies, Popular Culture

My paper is a critical investigation of the socio-political situation of the Indianised spectral king (Bhooter Raja) in Satyajit Ray's Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne (1969) and also focus on Ray's handling of the marginalised in the movie. I read the movie as an allegory of postcolonial struggle told from a regional perspective. Ray's portrayal of the Bhooter Raja (The king of ghosts) is typically Indianised. He deliberately deviates from the colonial tradition of Gothic fiction and customised Upendrakishore's tale as a postcolonial narrative. My paper focuses on Ray's vision of regional postcolonialism.

- by Sourav Kumar Nag
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- Postcolonial Studies, Bengali Cinema, Satyajit Ray, Ghost stories

Indian cinema has always been fascinated by a variety of psychological disorders such as pervasive developmental disorders, mental retardation, anxiety and mood disorders, personality and identity disorders, etc. This paper is a qualitative research; the objective is to explore any disparity between the cinematic representation and the DSM criteria for diagnosis of the disorders, and the effect of these representations (or misrepresentations, if any) on the layman’s perceptions of them. A review and analysis of certain popular Indian films (made between 1990 and 2010) that thematically
explore certain prevalent psychological disorders is attempted here, focusing on four major film industries in India, namely- Hindi from the north, Tamil from the south, Marathi from the west and Bengali from the east. This also includes structured interviews to assess both the knowledge about and attitudes towards the same, as created by such cinema, among general public that is not predisposed to accurate information (in terms of correct clinical picture, causes and treatment). These were conducted on a random sample of 120 subjects in the age range of 15-60, who had no prior or present knowledge of psychology. Results were assessed in percentage and mean values. Observations found disparity between the representation of mental disorders in Indian cinema and their DSM descriptions, which had an influence on its audience. The general perception about mental disorders is that it is curable, maybe controlled with discipline and is largely unacceptable in society. It was concluded that accurate portrayals make for relatively correct impressions on the viewers and leave less scope for misconception.

- by Simon Laishram
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- Abnormal Psychology, Clinical Psychology, Film Studies, Mental Health
- by Ravi Vasudevan
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- Film Studies, Genre studies, Postcolonial Studies, Film Analysis

This paper discusses the emergence and evolution of cinema in Bengal as a form of public culture since the early 20th century to its contemporary phase. Locating this cinema within the crosscurrents of political, historical and cultural transformation, the paper begins with reviewing the scholarship on Bengali cinema that has materialised over the last two decades. While a holistic history of Bengali cinema is still to be written, the scholarly works produced so far have revealed the problematic of writing such a history. We argue no linear narrative is possible, for so- called Bengali cinema, as the category of ‘regional cinema’ in India, is a product of conflicting forces, as regards to political conditions, industry, aesthetics, taste and target viewership. The construction of Bengali popular cinema, as distinct from a more widely circulated national cinema represented by the Bombay film industry, is an intriguing and complex process. This note summarising the scholarly contributions to the issue, proposes that a revisionist history of “Bengali” cinema could be possibly written, through an investigation of industry dynamics over the decades: technological transformations in filmmaking, changing economic networks of film production and distribution, publicity strategies, public cultures of film viewing, and the wide range of audiences the different forms of film have targeted, from the studio era to the present day. While shifting the focus from auteur studies and analyses of film texts as self-contained material, this ‘introduction’ propose that a new historiography of popular cinema in Bengal could be drawn by examining the dynamics of the emergence of stars and construction of stardom, along with a critical assessment of repeated success of certain genres and tropes over the decades.

- by Madhuja Mukherjee
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- Film Genre, Film Industries, Bengali Cinema, Indian Cinema
- by Subhajit Chatterjee
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- Melodrama, Bengali Cinema
- by Priyanjali Sen
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- Public Sphere, South Asian Literature, Bengali Cinema, Book Reviews
- by Manishita Dass
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- Bengali Cinema, Indian Cinema, Theatricality, Ritwik Ghatak

A lonely wife in Kolkata and a bachelor in London have a virtual affair, but are forced to rethink their relationship when they discover he is her brother-in-law. Charulata 2011 is an ingenious post-millennial adaptation of Tagore's novella, Nastanir (The Broken Nest, 1901), already immortalized by Satyajit Ray in his classic Charulata (1964). This intertextuality, especially with Ray, lends an added dimension to the film, allowing Chatterjee to contrast two modernities in Bengal-the colonial and glocal-over the course of a century. Both these women gain temporary respite from their suffocating marriage through an affair, but their circumstances are vastly different. While Tagore/Ray's heroine (like Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary and Lady Chatterley) could only bond with a man she knew, technology expands Charulata's choice in 2011. She romances the strange and the unknown-an unseen tall dark stranger with a gift for words. While the nineteenth century Bengali heroine had to reign in her erotic impulse, her twenty-first century counterpart submits to it, though with an overwhelming sense of guilt. But there are similarities too-both are childless homemakers; have a literary sensibility; and though a 100 years apart, in both their cases, the lover eventually departs, and duty ultimately wins over passion, bringing back the duly chastened wife to the wronged husband. Charulata 2011 thus dram-atizes a glocalized South Asian narrative, where the protagonist negotiates an uneasy juxtaposition of a globalized outlook on the world with the entrap-ment of age-old social obligations in her self.

- by Rituparna Roy
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- Southeast Asian Studies, Postcolonial Studies, Bengali Literature, Bengali Cinema
- by Arnab RoyChowdhury
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- Political Sociology, Social Movements, Indigenous Studies, Popular Culture

Chapter from THE GLOBAL ROAD MOVIE (edited by Timothy Corrigan and José Duarte).

- by Moira Weigel
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- Marxism, Postcolonial Studies, South Asian Studies, Bertolt Brecht
- by Megan Carrigy
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- Bengali Cinema, Indian Cinema, RITWIK GHATAK'S FILMS, Ritwik Ghatak

While Bengali theatre was quick to adapt Shakespeare on stage ever since its inception, Bengali films had shown little or no interest in this regard apart from two adaptations in the nineteen sixties and one at the turn of the twenty-first century. This paper tries to argue how contemporary Bengali cinema, especially, Ranjan Ghosh's "Hrid Majharey" in particular has tried to construct a new kind of popular by adapting Shakespeare which addresses both the exigencies of the mass as well as the class. By using the iconicity of Shakespeare on the one hand and the fandom of contemporary popular star actors on the other "Hrid Majharey" tries to straddle the conflicted priorities between the text and the star and thereby defining a new principle of commercial movie making and niche marketing.

- by Animesh Roy
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- Theatre Studies, Film Studies, Drama, Shakespearean Drama

This article attempts to write a cultural biography of Bengali film publicity. Here the film-related bulletins, publicity booklets, news paper advertisements, studio publications, posters and lobby cards of Bengali films provide me an entry point to this cultural biography starting from the silent era towards the changes in later decades. My narrative starts with the literary trait of early years followed by its logic of transformation with the emergence of new technology and newer production system and here I’ve tried to explore how the idea of bhadralok self and the pleasure of bhadralok world in its appeal and denial played a significant role.

- by spandan bhattacharya
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- Film Studies, Bengali Cinema, Indian Film Posters, film publicity
- by Richard Allen
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- Film Studies, Shakespeare, Adaptation, Film Adaptation

This paper considers the realm of mise-en-scene as a point of departure to analyse films by Rituparno Ghosh, especially Shubho Muharat (2003) and Satyanweshi (2013), which work within masculine genres such as detective films, and disrupt its equanimity and logicality. The ‘feminization’ of masculine orders through the feminine every day, makes these films significant despite the fact they are mostly chamber dramas, and trade with middle-class concerns.

- by Madhuja Mukherjee
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- Gender Studies, Gender and Sexuality, Bengali Cinema, Space