Ritwik Ghatak, Bengali Filmmaker

Last week Film at Lincoln Center screened a retrospective series of restored black-and-white films by Bengali master Ritwik Ghatak. I caught two films: A River Called Titas, an epic about the dying of a village, told in linked stories; and The Cloud-Capped Star, a more domestic film about a young woman who gave her life working for her family. Both films could be described as social realism, but I would rather call them lyrical realism, so beautifully crafted are the images and sequences.

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