Grave lutto per il cinema indiano. Rituparno Ghosh, talentuoso e pluripremiato regista bengali, si è spento questa mattina a Kolkata a causa di un attacco di cuore. Il 31 agosto avrebbe compiuto 50 anni. Ghosh è molto noto nel circuito dei festival: numerose sue pellicole sono state proiettate in diverse rassegne internazionali. Il suo è un cinema decisamente d'autore, ma Ghosh non ha mai disdegnato di scritturare star di grosso calibro - anche in prestito da Bollywood - per i suoi film (Aishwarya Rai, Amitabh Bachchan, Ajay Devgan, Preity Zinta, eccetera). Prosenjit Chatterjee, superstar del cinema popolare in lingua bengali, ha offerto performance magnifiche nelle pellicole dirette da Ghosh (vedi Dosar). La post-produzione di Satyanweshi, ultimo lavoro del regista, è tuttora in corso.
Aggiornamento del 5 giugno 2013 - The Alternative World of Rituparno Ghosh, Myna Mukherjee, Open:
'Of all his characters, the one he felt closest to was Binodini, played by Aishwarya Rai in his adaptation of Chokher Bali (...). Binodini stood on a threshold of social transformation as she struggled for social acceptance as a widow after the British had legislated widow remarriage in the face of countrywide resistance. Rituparno felt a strong sense of identification with the tragic isolation of someone caught in the half-light of legitimacy. It was this isolation perhaps that made him one of the most sensitive Indian directors of recent years. In a society with inequalities so deeply entrenched, he put across the struggle of being a human being - swallowed by desire, choked by experience, trapped by social expectations - with lyrical melancholy. And like all accomplished tragedians, he was the master of the dark poem, the kind of poetry that only comes through when bleakness is almost unbearable.
In the 21 years since he made his first film, Rituparno was part of over 24 films. He directed and wrote over 21 of them, and acted in his last three releases as the lead. His films have won over 18 National Awards, and have travelled widely across the international festival circuit. He is acknowledged as the central figure in the late 1990s’ renaissance of Bengali Cinema that broke what was otherwise a bleak period. Best known for emotional dramas, his career spanned genres as diverse as children’s films (Hirer Angti, 1992) and murder mysteries (Shubho Mahurat). At a time when cinema was centered around the ‘Hero’, Ritu chose to make film after film about women. Unishe April and Titli, with Aparna Sen and Konkona Sen [Sharma], both explored the tensions and intimacies of a mother-daughter relationship. Bariwali won Kirron Kher a Best Actress National Award for her portrayal of an ageing spinster in a decrepit house in a state of slow decay. Dahan explored the apathy and misogyny of society around victims of sexual assault. Ritu was always willing to take risks. From incest to infidelity, he invested the hitherto sacrosanct middle-class Bengali family on screen with narratives that had been wiped off cinematically in the sanitised blaze of mainstream depictions. In Utsab, Dosar and Shob Charitro Kalponik, he explored complicated, damaged and often flawed human relations in a sensitive but unsentimental way. Rituparno was willing to break cinematic norms as well. For example, Dosar,(...) a tale of an unfaithful marriage in the afterlight of an accident, was shot completely in black-and-white. Shob Charitro Kalponik departs from linear narrative and descends into surrealism as a stunningly beautiful Bipasha Basu is interrupted in her infidelity by her poet husband’s death, an event that leads her to re-interrogate her entire relationship with him.
Inspired by Bengal cultural icons Satyajit Ray and Tagore, Rituparno’s films helped define the next generation of Bengal New Wave cinema. He paid tribute to Rabindranath Tagore by reinterpreting three classics: Chokher Bali (which won him the Locarno Best Film Award in 2003), Noukadubi (a period film) and his most recent release Chitrangada. By the time I came to know him, Rituparno Ghosh was a star director and had earned the reputation of being something of a diva. His Hindi film Raincoat, featuring Aishwarya Rai and Ajay Devgan, had established him as one of the few to cross over from regional cinema to Bollywood. Other mainstream Hindi actors like Manisha Koirala and Bipasha Basu had also worked with him. He had hosted two celebrity chat shows, Ebong Rituparno and Rituparno and Co., in which he addressed his guests fondly as tui (an intimate ‘you’). His most telling moment on TV was when he publicly scolded Mir, a well-known mimicry and stand-up artist. Mir had in the past used Ritu as material for his comic routine. Ritu shamed him on national television in that one show, asking him if he realised how prejudiced he was in poking fun at effeminate men. Ritu himself had always been effeminate, but he slowly claimed his queer self in public spaces. His flamboyant turbans, kohled eyes and flowing robes earned him notoriety and a grudging respect in Kolkata’s art appreciation circles. It was his city, one that ‘could neither ignore nor embrace him’, in his own words. (...)
It was the first time Ritu was to act in a movie [Aar Ekti Premer Golpo], and that too, in the role of an openly gay filmmaker. The film’s director was Kaushik Ganguly, but it was Ritu’s story. His involvement in every frame of the film was well known. (...) How momentous that film was in its representation of queer life. It felt as if his entire career had led up to the courage it took to make that one film. Rituparno made Memories in March and Chitrangada after that. These dealt defiantly and unapologetically with the exile of homosexuality, with retribution and, finally, redemption. Each was an intense exhalation for queer audiences. In the deafening din of mainstream heteronormativity and the trite stereotypes that are often the only representation of a largely silent and invisibilised community, here was cinema that made them belong. There was desire, pain, complexity, beauty, isolation and finally poetry. In his specificity of representation, he created cinema that was universal'.
