{"id":6077,"date":"2021-03-27T07:31:37","date_gmt":"2021-03-27T02:01:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/?p=6077"},"modified":"2021-03-27T08:12:08","modified_gmt":"2021-03-27T02:42:08","slug":"a-daughters-tribute-3-documentaries-festival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/a-daughters-tribute-3-documentaries-festival\/","title":{"rendered":"A Daughter’s Tribute"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A Daughter’s Tribute<\/p><\/div>\n

A Daughter pays her tribute to her father\/mother for the legacy she has inherited from them, through the medium of cinema: This was the concept behind the festival of three documentaries by three daughters with which Films Division celebrated the International women\u2019s Day at Nandan in Kolkata. The films were Nargis<\/em> (1993), The Last Adieu<\/em> (2016) and And They Made Classics\u2026<\/em> (2018) \u2013 respectfully directed by Priya Dutt, Shabnam Sukhdev, and yours faithfully.<\/p>\n

When did the thought to curate such a festival occur to me? Was it when Baba passed away? Or earlier, when Baba asked me to make a film based on his story, Fatimar Ukti<\/em>? Or perhaps later, when I saw a poster of \u2018Selfie With Daughter\u2019? Let me follow my thoughts backward.<\/p>\n

On March 2, as I was shopping in Dakshinapan, Sumay Mukherjee of Films Division called me up to say, \u201cDidi, we will host \u2018A Daughter\u2019s Tribute\u2019 as our tribute to Women but we will do it on Friday, March 5. Are you okay with the plan?\u201d Without a second thought I said, \u201cSure we will \u2013 tell me what I can do.\u201d Sumay and I had talked about it months ago, during the 25th<\/sup> Kolkata International Film Festival in November 2019. I had proposed the concept that I had nurtured since I saw this poster of the campaign urging fathers to click themselves with daughters in order to raise people\u2019s pride in their girl child. Aimed at raising awareness against female foeticide, the campaign was initiated in Haryana – a state known for topping in the crime – was endorsed by former President Pranab Mukherjee, prompting many to go against the preference for boys and adopt a girl child. Perhaps it had touched a chord in me as the year was 2017 \u2013 when I was celebrating the birth centenary of my father Nabendu Ghosh.<\/p>\n

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The father reads out from Vaishnav Padavali<\/em> as his daughter Kalyani (Nutan) and the freedom fighter Shekhar (Ashok Kumar) listen in Bandini<\/em> (1963)<\/p><\/div>\n

For the records, this campaign had been preceded by the Kanyashri Prakalpa, initiated in West Bengal in 2013. In this project the backward families are helped with a cash fund to discourage early marriage of the girl child who is generally considered a \u2018burden\u2019. But five years before that, when I had screened Remembering Bimal Roy<\/em> in a tribute to the legend that I\u2019d organized in January 2008, I sat in the auditorium howling away at the end of a screening of Bandini<\/em>. Was I reacting uncontrollably to the sequence where the father reads out from Vaishnav Padavali<\/em> to his daughter, just as Baba used to? Or that unforgettable scene where a stupefied Nutan returns after seeing her dead father, climbs the stairs benumbed, is humiliated by her hysterical charge, leading to her poisoning the patient who turned out to be the wife of her ex-lover, Ashok Kumar?<\/p>\n

This perhaps was the moment when I finally mourned my father, for whom I had not shed a tear when he\u2019d passed away a month before, on December 15, 2007. Or it could be because I felt I had failed to keep my father\u2019s words to me one evening as we sat discussing his writings. \u00a0\u201cThis Fatima\u2019r Ukti<\/em>,\u201d he pointed to the story he had just finished writing, \u201cyou make into a film.\u201d I had no inkling then that I would be translating it into English and publishing it as a part of That Bird Called Happiness. <\/em>Being a student of literature, I had always been close to the literary side of Baba\u2019s personality although I have inherited cinema too from the screen writer, as a film analyst, a member of NFDC\u2019s script committee and a member of CBFC.<\/p>\n

But filmmaking is a different cup of tea from writing, translating or editing. So, filming Fatima\u2019s Story<\/em> remained a dream while I started translating Meenakshi<\/em>, the \u2018father-daughter\u2019 story about a girl growing up in a hostel who is needled by her classmates about her non-existing father. Baba had penned the Bengali story in September of 1950, which Bimal Roy had directed for producer S H Munshi. The film, Baap Beti<\/em> (1952) had Baby Tabassum, Baby Naaz and Baby Asha Parekh in the cast along with Ranjan, then a swashbuckling star from the south.<\/p>\n

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Bimal Roy with Ranjan, Tabassum, the actors of Baap Beti<\/em> and Rinki Roy<\/p><\/div>\n

Besides this, Baba had also scripted Sharafat<\/em> (1970) for director Asit Sen. It tracked the story of a feisty tawaif, a courtesan whose search for her father leads her to a corrupt politician, unveiling society\u2019s hypocritical moral standards.<\/p>\n

Years later Baba had also inspired my brother Subhankar Ghosh to direct Woh Chhokri<\/em> (1993) \u2013 again, about a wayward daughter whose search for her missing father ends in the corrupt politician getting her murdered. Based on a story by Bengal\u2019s Bonophul, this film had won National awards for all three major players \u2013 Pallavi Joshi as the daughter, Neena Gupta as the abandoned mother, and Paresh Rawail as the ambition driven, self-seeking father.<\/p>\n

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Neena Gupta and Paresh Rawal in Woh Chhokri<\/em> (Pic courtesy: NFAI\/Twitter)<\/p><\/div>\n

At different points I have been stalked by the thought of highlighting the father-daughter bond. The easiest way to do that would have been to curate a festival of films exploring this bonding. These three films mentioned above would certainly have been part of the festival \u00a0as would Samir Chanda\u2019s Ek Nadir Galpo <\/em>(2008\/ Bengali) wherein Mithun Chakraborty, a grief stricken father, embarks on a crusade to rename a river to honour his dead daughter,<\/em> and Shoojit Sircar\u2019s Piku<\/em> (2015), pivoting on an architect who has a running feud with her widower father since he traces every problem in his life to his bowel movement.<\/p>\n

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Amitabh Bachchan in Piku<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

However, not only the making of a film, the curating of a festival with feature films too takes more doing. Meanwhile Baba\u2019s Birth Centenary was approaching, I was writing My Father and I<\/em>, the editor\u2019s note for Me and I<\/em>, translated by my son Devottam Sengupta for Hachette Book Mine. And suddenly I remembered the two-hour interview that my friend Joy Bimal Roy, son of the cine maestro, had so graciously gifted me at the end of the screening of Remembering Bimal Roy<\/em>. He had started filming his Centenary tribute to his deathless father with a leisurely interview with \u2018Nabendu Kaku\u2019. Since only a small bit had got used, he\u2019d said, \u201cI\u2019ll be happy if you can use the rest.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Nabendu Ghosh speaking about Bimal Roy and his films in And They Made Classics..<\/em>.<\/p><\/div>\n

And They Made Classics\u2026<\/em> was the result. The hour-long documentary talks of the unique bonding shared between the screenwriter with his \u2018filmguru\u2019 \u2013 and takes us behind the screen into the making of the evergreen classics he was associated in the making of: Maa<\/em> (1952), Baap Beti<\/em> (1952), Parineeta<\/em> (1953), Do Bigha Zamin<\/em> (1953), Biraj Bahu<\/em> (1954), Naukri<\/em> (1954), Devdas<\/em> (1955), Yahudi<\/em> (1957), Madhumati<\/em> (1958), Sujata<\/em> (1959), Bandini<\/em> (1964). It is an unparalleled bonding in the history of cinema \u2013 perhaps anywhere in the world, and certainly in India. And how did it happen? My insight: it was founded on 1. Shared history. 2. Shared creative quality 3. Meditative humanism.<\/p>\n

Once I had made this documentary, I started looking closely at documentaries by other daughters – of illustrious parents. I remembered watching The Last Adieu<\/em> (2014) in the Indian Panorama section of the IFFI in Goa. I was in the jury for the Feature Films that year, but I was most absorbed by Shabnam Sukhdev\u2019s struggle to construct a portrait of her father Sukhdev Singh Sandhu. Boisterous, jovial, temperamental, contrary \u2013 Sukhdev, when he suddenly died at age 46, had left behind a huge body of work \u2013 and an unresolved relationship with his daughter who, as a child, felt distanced from him as much by his alcoholism as by his workaholism.<\/p>\n

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Filmmaker & Production Designer MS Sathyu in The Last Adieu<\/em> (2016)<\/p><\/div>\n

The 93-minute-long documentary is a daughter\u2019s personal quest to unravel the past and make a connection with her fabled father who I most remember for Khilonewala<\/em> (1971), a plea for communal harmony featuring mime artist Irshad Panjatan. Sukhdev, of course, can be dubbed a historian: his Nine Months to Freedom: The Story of Bangladesh<\/em> (1972) remains a powerful visual documentation of East Pakistan\u2019s war with its Western wing, and the emergence of the independent state. And it does so through the deplorable plight of the refugees – and treasured interviews with Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and Ayub Khan, among others.<\/p>\n

This 93-minute documentary is \u201ca daughter\u2019s journey from denial to indifference, from apathy to empathy, from hate to love,\u201d as she discovers her father was a sensitive and compulsive filmmaker who sacrificed his personal life to painstakingly conveying social and political truths on celluloid.<\/p>\n

The Last Adieu<\/em> (2016) Directed by Shabnam Sukhdev<\/span><\/p>\n