Since his death at age fifty in 1976, Ritwik Ghatak has come to be regarded as one of the greatest figures in postwar Indian cinema for his brilliant and abrasive films, among the most revolutionary achievements in contemporary Indian art. The product of an early involvement in politics and people’s theater, Ghatak, as a filmmaker, was bent on wedding his political activism with cultural content as he fashioned popular forms—melodrama, songs, dances—into appropriate vehicles for radical political expression. His films are almost all veiled autobiography. Ghatak came of age during the convulsions of the 1940s—World War II, the terrible "man-made famine" of 1944, the communal violence that came with independence, and especially the partition of Bengal, which obsessed him all his life. His subjects are almost invariably chosen from among the uprooted and the dispossessed: parentless children, homeless families, disoriented refugees, and the petit bourgeoisie, economically broken by their exile. Yet, as in the fatal vision of Robert Bresson, there is a glimmer of hope in even the darkest moments. Despite widespread critical acclaim, not one of Ritwik Ghatak’s films is available for distribution in the United States, either on film or video. We invite you to take advantage of this rare opportunity to discover the works of this neglected master.