Chidananda Das Gupta (b. 1921)

Noted Indian film critic committed to a realist aesthetic and humanist philosophy best exemplified by Satyajit Ray. Born in Shillong. Founded with Ray et al. the Calcutta Film Society (1947) and the Federation of Film Societies of India (1960), functioning as its secretary until 1967. Editor of the Indian Film Review and Indian Film Culture and widely published film and arts journalist. Published The Cinema of Satyajit Ray and the anthology Film India: Satyajit Ray (both 1981) in addition to numerous essays. Extended his argument for an organic film culture beyond Ray to cover mainstream Indian cinema, launching the notion of the All-India Film with a culturally integrative role in nationalist terms (see the essay ‘The Cultural Basis of Indian Cinema’, Recent essays collected in his The Painted Face (1991) describe the realist and the Mine; Mizoram; 1984: Acharya Nandalal. All-India Film as committed to, respectively, a cinema of fact and of myth. For some years editor of the journal Span published by the USIS. Also known as the director of the critically acclaimed feature Bilet Pherat (1972), and of the documentary about Ananda Coomaraswamy, The Dance of Shiva (1968). Other documentaries include Portrait of a City (1961), The Stuff of Steel (1969), Birju Maharaj (1972) and Zaroorat Ki Purti (1979). Father of Bengali star Aparna Sen, scored his daughter’s film Sati (1989).

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