115-yr-old heritage studio back to making films

Kolkata: The year 2020 might have left the darkest and deepest scars in each of our lives, but it also made people more resilient and determined to fight against odds. Amid the pandemic, Aurora Film Corporation — India’s oldest functioning cinema producing and distributing organization since 1906 — dared to produce a new feature film, ‘Kalkokkho’ after a long break with a new-generation team, headed by National Award-winning film-maker duo Rajdeep Paul and Sarmistha Maiti — both alumni of Satyajit Ray Film & Television Institute.

‘Kalkokkho’ also marked the launch of the fourth-generation film-makers of the 115-year-old Aurora Film Corporation led by its third-generation custodian and director-producer Anjan Bose. It set the prologue for the new era of Bengali cinema to keep rolling with the support of the best infrastructure of the studio system that Aurora claims to be setting up in the City of Joy. A part of ‘Kalkokkho’ was shot on the new floor of the heritage Aurora Studio.

“Since the inception of cinema in India — with the legacy of producing and distributing Satyajit Ray’s ‘Jalsaghar’ and ‘Aparajito’ and also distributing Ray’s ‘Pather Panchali’ and Ritwik Ghatak’s ‘Ajantrik’ among others — Aurora has always supported novel creative minds and enlightening the vision of noble cinema. The saga continues with our latest production and I hope it marks a new beginning for the Bengali film industry,” Bose said.

Set in the middle of a pandemic, ‘Kalkokkho’ tells the story of an apathetic but adept doctor who is taken hostage by a young woman in a desperate attempt to ensure the safety of her family. Captive in an almost desolate house inhabited by three women — his abductor, an amnesic old woman and a lonely young girl — the doctor discovers that forces beyond his comprehension are at play and he could be trapped not only in space, but also in time.

The makers, who conceived the film during the lockdown, said ‘Kalkokkho’ was a cinematic experience of a time loop that explored the sense of being trapped in time where life was a dreadful paranoia with the constant reminder of our own mortality that we all had experienced during the severity of the pandemic when we were locked in our homes, trying to save ourselves from an invisible enemy. It also explores the dark aspects of our selfish nature that the pandemic laid bare as was evident from the numerous instances of social apathy and lack of trust that shocked everyone.