Did you know Ritwik Ghatak acted in three of his own films?

Many believe the seed of partition-oriented

films

was reaped at that time when Ritwik Ghatak appeared in Nemai Ghosh’s critically acclaimed ‘Chinnamul’ (The Uprooted) in 1950. The film received great appreciation from Russian filmmaker Vsevolod Pudovkin. He was so impressed with the film that he later bought the film to release it in

Russia

.

Incidentally, Ghatak was praised for acting in three of his own films later – ‘Subarnarekha’ (1962), ‘Titash Ekti Nadir Naam’ (1973) and ‘Jukti Takko Aar Gappo’ (1974).

Ritwik Ghatak’s career was nothing but a constant struggle, against a public that, per his contemporary Satyajit Ray, largely ignored his films; against a society that lost its way amid rampant modernization, and against a national cinema whose conventions he wanted to break with each work.

He had only completed 8 fiction feature films, but each was a landmark achievement in the history of Indian cinema. All of his works movingly reflected the social realities of a nation trying to revise its identity after the British colonial rule and the partition of India and Pakistan.