Abstract
Cinema Makes it Safe: Akaler Sandhane and the Problem of Looking
This paper shall consider the trifecta of Bengali film directors Satyajit Ray (1921-1992), Mrinal Sen (1923-2018), and Ritwik Ghatak (1925-1976) to map a period in Indian film history when a political cinema was funded, at least in part, by the Indian government. The three directors were a provocative part of the Indian New Wave from the 1950s to the 1970s. They map two distinct definitions of “good political cinema” – from an aesthetically sophisticated cinema to a radical political text – that the state attempted to fund and administer in an attempt to develop cinema as an art form rather than as mass entertainment. In particular this paper shall consider Akaler Shandhaney (In Search of Famine, Sen, 1980) to argue that the film is unique in naming a pernicious relationship of inter-dependence between filmmaking, political speech, and the abject sub-altern. This self-reflexivity allows Sen to explore the exploitative nature of filmmaking and the middle class intellectual.
Read in conjunction with Ashani Sanket (Distant Thunder, Ray 1973) and Jukti, Takko Aar Galpo (Reason, Story and Debate, Ghatak, 1977), Akaler Shandhaney calls into question filmmaking and funding practices, revealing the imbrication of national, social and cultural institutions in a complex interplay of aesthetic, ideological, and bureaucratic forces engaged in making “political” cinema possible. This paper argues that Sen uses this moment of self-reflexivity to speak a truth to the necessarily ambivalent and murky business of film making and viewing.