Far from the madding crowd of Central Avenue,the arterial road of Kolkata,Bharat Bhavan is a prototypical ode to old Calcutta. Its gothic edifice rises above everything around. Roots of parasitic shrubs crawl out like tentacles around it. An unpolished brass plate adorns the entrance. Calcutta Film Society,it reads proudly. Any queries about the iconic film society which was set up by Satyajit Ray in 1947 is faced with stone-faced resistance by the gatekeeper. Yaha koi film studio nahi hai (There is no film studio here), he insists. But if Aparna Sen and few other celebrated directors from Kolkata have their way,Calcutta Film Society wont languish in anonymity anymore. The initiative taken by Sen,Goutam Ghose,Sandip Ray,Suman Mukhopadhyay and Srijit Mukherji aims to recreate the film culture of the 1950s and 1960s. There are talks about master classes,workshops and two memorial lectures named after Ray and Dasgupta. We also plan to revamp the office at Bharat Bhavan so that film lovers can watch films there, says Sen. To make it more youth friendly,the Calcutta Film Society will also have a Facebook page. It was one of the most celebrated film societies in the country. It has contributed a great deal in developing some sort of film culture in our state, says Sen,whose father Chidananda Dasgupta was one of the founder members of the society. In 1947,when the film society was launched,Satyajit Ray was just a young aspiring filmmaker who supplied books and film magazines to its members. Dasgupta,who was later to become one of the most respected film critics in the country,offered a room in his home for meetings. The fact that the society provided a common platform for film lovers to share their views was integral in shaping the film culture in the country. Today,people have ready access to films thanks to the internet and DVDs,but we need to watch films together if we want to foster a serious film culture, says the noted filmmaker Ghose.
