Bengali-cinema

There are actors, and then there are institutions. In the history of Bengali cinema, Uttam Kumar belongs firmly to the second category. For nearly three decades, from the early 1950s until his sudden death in 1980, he did not simply appear in Bengali films. He defined what a Bengali film was supposed to feel like. To an entire generation of viewers in Calcutta and across Bengal, the word "hero" and the name "Uttam" became almost interchangeable. Even today, more than four decades after his...

Kolkata’s popular actress Ritabhari Chakraborty has once again spoken out about the dark side of the city’s showbiz industry. In an interview about sexual harassment in the workplace and the ‘MeToo’ movement, she made explosive remarks. From speaking out on social media several years ago against two influential producers without directly naming them to submitting a petition to the chief minister, the actress has made her position clear on the issue. Asked why she had remained silent for s...

Ninety-one years ago today, on August 19, 1935, a boy named Mohammad Zahirullah was born in the small village of Majupur, in the Sonagazi area of what was then Noakhali district in undivided Bengal. Nobody in that household could have guessed that this child would grow up to change the shape of Bengali storytelling twice over, first with his pen and then with his camera, before vanishing into the chaos of a newborn nation and never being found again. The world remembers him as Zahir Raihan: nove...