The Cloud-Capped Star
Poetry and Partition: The Films of Ritwik Ghatak
November 1 - 6, 2019
This soul-shattering classic of Indian cinema combines searing imagery, joltingly expressionistic sound design, and an extraordinary central performance from Supriya Choudhury as a relentlessly self-sacrificing daughter supporting her ungrateful family.
Introduction by scholar Udaya Kumar on November 2
Considered by many Ghatak’s masterpiece, The Cloud-Capped Star is set in late-1950s Kolkata, just a few years after the partition that separated historic Bengal into the Pakistani East Bengal and the Indian West Bengal. Neeta (an extraordinary performance by leading Bengali actor Supriya Choudhury) is the eldest daughter in a family of refugees, as well as her family’s principal breadwinner. Yet, even as she becomes more visibly ill, her parents and siblings keep demanding more, squeezing the last bit of life from this warm, vibrant woman. Her relationships to the other women in her family—her mother and her younger sister, Geeta—are especially complex; together, the three women evoke multiple aspects of the feminine: the sensuous, the nurturing, and the destructive. A Janus Films release.
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