It is the maestro Ritwik Ghatak’s birthday today and on the eve of the filmmakers 99th anniversary, a tribute movie is announced.
There is a sudden rise in tribute movies in the Bengali film industry in the last few years. Previously, there were only biopics and Ritwik Ghatak has had his wonderful biopic titled ‘Meghe Dhaka Tara’ already. But now, filmmakers are leaned in towards meta-filmmaking, making sequels to classics, re-interpreting them and making films about the journey of the masters. We have got films like ‘Aparajito’, ‘Dear Satyajit’, ‘Abhijaan’, ‘Padatik’, ‘Palan’, ‘Chaalchitra Ekhon’ and more.
The new movie will be titled ‘Shantirupena’ and it is being directed by Suman Moitra. It will be based on a short story in Bengali. There are not many details revealed about the movie but it will have a feminist theme. Suman Moitra is known for his film ‘Abar Aranyer Dinratri’ which was a re-interpretation of and homage to Satyajit Ray’s ‘Aranyer Dinratri’. Similarly this movie will approach Ritwik Ghatak’s style of storytelling.
However, there are people who think that this is going out of hand and filmmakers should now try to find out their own voices instead of churning the greats. This year, the box office records for Bengali movies were broken and the releases were pretty good. Now is a better time to focus on original stories than ever.