As part of our Film & Documentary Screening series this month we bring to you S.D. : Saroj Dutta and His Times by Kasturi Basu and Mitali Biswas (U.K. Premiere). Looking at the Naxalbari peasant uprising of the 1960s in east India, this documentary asks some critical questions that remain unanswered and relevant to this day. Film will be followed by a post-screening discussion.
Programmed by Vasudha Wantu.
A communist poet and radical journalist, a secret State killing, an attempted revolution sparked in the village of Naxalbari at the Himalayan foothills. Setting out to tell the story of the slain revolutionary Saroj Dutta (lovingly known as comrade S.D.), the film gets drawn into a vortex of his tumultuous times, tracing turns and twists of the communist movement in India over three decades. A search by present-generation filmmakers, the film uses personal and public historical archives and conversations with rebels of the Naxalbari rebellion. Five decades later, the film holds a key to understanding the turbulent, audacious sixties and seventies in India and the world.
Duration: 115 minutes
Language: Bengali & English.
Door 19:30 | Film 20:00 | Entry Free
Directors:
Kasturi Basu is an independent documentary filmmaker, social activist, researcher, writer and editor based in Kolkata. She is a founder-member of the People’s Film Collective, and co-editor of ‘Pratirodher Cinema’, a Bengali journal on the documentary, cinema and counterculture. She has co-edited a volume ‘Toward’s a People’s Cinema: Independent Documentary and its Audience in India’ (2018) published by the Three Essays Collective, New Delhi. ‘S.D.: Saroj Dutta and His Times’ (2018) is her first feature-length documentary.
Mitali Biswas is a filmmaker, social activist and worked as a freelance journalist. In the year 2015, she directed and produced a documentary film titled ‘Identity Undisclosed’ on the theme of sexual violence against women. At present, she is in the editorial board of ‘Protibidhan’, a magazine dedicated to women’s movements.
Principal crew: Associate Direction and Writing: Dwaipayan Banerjee. Research: Kasturi Basu, Dwaipayan Banerjee, Mitali Biswas. Principal Camera: Debalina Majumdar, Kasturi Basu, Subhadipta Biswas. Editing: Subhadipta Biswas. Sound Design and final mixing: Sukanta Majumdar. Sound editing and mixing: Anindit Roy. Location Sound: Mitali Biswas, Sabyasachi Pal. Music: Santajit Chatterjee. Colour grading: Arindam Das. Produced by: Kasturi Basu, Mitali Biswas, Dwaipayan Banerjee
