[Reader-list] 4th posting IFS-2007--Cinematic City:Kolkata, Modernity, Middle Class and the Urban Woman--Astudy of 1950s and 60s Popular Bangla Cinema.

[smita mitra]

Dear All,

Sorry for delayed posting.Just back in town from my field trip in Kolkata.

The primary objective of my field trip was to do a recce of the material
that is available on popular cinema of the 50s and 60s.thanks to satellite
television it is easier to get at least the  Vcds and some Dvds. I have
managed to collect all the films that I had on my list and added somemore
that I thought were interesting though do not necessarily fit into my
project at this moment.Need some more work to figure out how to incorporate
these films into my narrative of the cinematic city, modernity,and the
middle class.

As I started my field trip ,I realised that there was a dearth of critical
material that I could easily access. One reason seems to be a curious apathy
to Popular Commercial Bangla cinema.Whoever I spoke to seemed surprised that
I had chosen to work on these films inspite of the fact that these old films
have a tremendous presence in the popular domain ,specially as they are
repeatedly telecast on all the satellite channels and their music is the
staple of all FM and Radio channels.Anyway for most of us who choose to work
on popular culture this is a familiar refrain.I guess we need to create our
own archive,and use what is available.

One axis of archive on Bangla cinema that is easy to access is the fantastic
collection on the cinema of Satyajit Ray and the other masters like Ghatak
and Sen.Their writing on cinema, works on them-both in Bangla and English is
easily available both in the bookshops at College Street and Libraries like
Nandan, Rupkala Kendra, Satyajit Ray Institute ,Jadavpur Film Studiesdept
etc.

However what I found interesting was the existence of a thriving subculture
of published books in the popular market on the stars of this period.It is
amazing that a number of small publishers in College Street(this is the book
bazaar in Kolkata ,an amazing world of lanes and bylanes stocked with
everything a bibliophile may want,it is one of the must visits in the
city),regularly commission books on Uttam Kumar or Suchitra Sen.I managed to
get around 10 books on the two stars!!!(Of course now I will have to read
them as well).

The other discovery was a Little magazine Library in the same area that has
two huge shelves of little magazines on cinema!! I propose to go back and
work there.The old Film Clubs like Cine Central, North Calcutta Film Society
and Chitrabani also have a great collection of their film
journals.Thesesocieties came into existence in the 50s and still have
a presence in the
film culture of the city.Their old members can provide interesting inputs on
that period.I was thrilled to discover that CSSS has a huge collection of
50s and 60s filmposters painstakingly put together from various private
collections by Gautam Bhadra.The West Bengal government has recently
converted the old Radha Studio in Tollygunj into a Film Archive.I visited
the inaugaral exhibition of still photographs narrating a brief history of
Bangla Cinema.The Director of the archive Shri Debananda Sengupta assured me
that it would be fully functional in a year's time as they are in the
process of collecting and curating their material.One only hopes that they
would take popular films more seriously and plan their collection
accordingly.

I am planing to sort out the material that I have collected and keep you
guys informed on this.

Regards,

Smita.
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