Ritwik genius comes alive on screen

Bhopal: Screening of documentaries by famed filmmaker Ritwik Ghatak, satiated appetite of movie aficionados at Bharat Bhavan, on Sunday.
The documentaries by this master cinematographer whose works include Meghe Dhaka Tara, Komal Gandhar and Subarnarekha, meticulously capture social reality on screen.
In the first film - Durbargati Padma - situation in Bangladesh is depicted during the Pakistan war.It shows how innocents are the only ones affected in such a crisis, thereby raising a question on war and its effects, political strategy and mass destruction. The narration is by a soldier, who outpours his grief upon seeing how his Shonar Bangla is being destroyed, while asking why innocents are made to suffer in a war.
In the second film - Scientists of Tomorrow - Ghatak presents increasing exposure of science education to deserving children by way of scholarship programmes and giving them new opportunities to shape their future as well as that of the nation. His protagonist is a village child aspiring to become a scientist and the film is his journey to stand among great men like C V Raman.
Third film - Warli paintings - described the art and its makers. It showed how plants, and not brushes, are used for these paintings that depict reality of society. The film then shows how this art undergoes a change, as lives of its makers undergo a makeover.
The last documentary was Anadidhari, the theme of which is Indian folk dance and related rituals.
"Though I have never been into documentaries, it is really worth watching" says Vrinda Chauhan, a visitor.
"We want to convey that there is more than mere fiction and cinema world. There is a world of documentaries which shows fact and not just imaginations and this is why we came up with this idea to show documentaries expressing lives of stars and real situation of world," said Narendra Kumar Rao, organizer.