¹ Varshney, Anil (3–17 January 1981), Highlights of FFSI's Twenty-one years, IFSON Special number, 8^th International Film Festival of India, Delhi, 3 (1): 73Google Scholar. According to Varshney even though 60 film societies closed down during this period the growth of such societies outstripped the number of closures.

² Satyajit Ray was one of the founding members of the Calcutta film society. Later, he served as the president of the Federation of Film Societies in India, a post currently held (2011) by Shyam Benegal who started his film society career in Hyderabad. Mrinal Sen and Ritwik Ghatak were involved with film societies like Cine Central and the Cine Club of Calcutta, Basu Chatterjee with Anandam in Bombay, while Adoor Gopalkrishnan and G. Aravindam were pioneers of the film society movement in Kerala.

³ Gopal, Priyamvada, Literary Radicalism in India: gender, nation and the transition to independence, London: Routledge, 2005, p. 16CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴ Roy, Mrigankasekhar, ‘Birth of a Film Culture’, in Mukhopadhyay, Bibhas (ed.), Chalachitra Charcha, no. 18, published during the 13th Calcutta Film Festival, 2009, p. 41Google Scholar. Such an understanding of cinema is reminiscent of the ways in which the Progressive Writers Association had once articulated their manifesto in the 1930s: ‘. . .under the limitations of India, through the disintegration of our values. . . the ossification of our political and social forces, the task of our writers is an immensely difficult one. A great literature will be born among us as our struggle advances, as we master aesthetic forms, as we attain the sincerity through which alone it is possible to mould artistic talent and achieve works which approximate to the demands of the subject matter. . .it means the shifting of the standards of criticism which we naively adopted under the influence of the subjective, idealist, individualist, bourgeois point of view which arbitrarily judges literature from the criterion of what is or is not in “bad taste”. . .to what is called social realism’, Manifesto of the Progressive Writers Association cited in Pradhan, Sudhi (ed.), Marxist Cultural Movement in India: Chronicles and Documents, 1936–1947, vol. 1, Calcutta: Mrs Santi Pradhan, 1979, pp. 7–8Google Scholar.

⁵ There were a few directors associated with the mainstream film industries whose works were well received in film society circles. They included Bimal Roy, Nitin Bose, K. A. Abbas, and V. Shantaram.

⁶ The political leanings of a majority of film society activists were towards the Left. This is not to suggest that all members of film societies belonged to the Communist Party of India (CPI). As Gopal notes in her study of the Progressive Writers Association (PWA) and Indian People's Theatre Association (IPTA), whilst many artists and writers associated with these movements had links to the CPI, ‘it is incorrect to reduce the organization's mandate. . .to that of a cultural front for or of the CPI’, in Priyamvada Gopal, Literary Radicalism in India, p. 17. These remarks are equally applicable to the film society movement. While many cine-activists, notably Mrinal Sen had some links to the party that were demonstrated in the political radicalism that suffused their cinema and writings, there were also numerous others like Satyajit Ray who did not have any formal affiliation to the CPI. Yet, Ray too, like earlier affiliates of the PWA and IPTA, maintained broadly leftist and humanist sensibilities, particularly pronounced in his city films. The same holds true for the Malayalam language filmmaker Adoor Gopalakrishnan who was influential in establishing the Chitralekha film society as a cooperative body in that communist-ruled southern Indian state. A later day film society activist and director, Kumar Shahani, saw himself as part of a global leftist avant garde. A telling testimony of this comes in a letter he wrote to his fellow filmmaker, Mani Kaul, from Paris in 1968 when he joined in the demonstrations protesting against the removal of Henri Langlois, the co-founder of the Cinematheque Francais, which brought such figures as Truffaut, Chabrol, Godard, among others to the streets in Kumar Shahani, ‘A Letter from Paris’, in Anil and Akhila Srivastava, Movement, Bombay: Suchitra Publication, 15 December 1971. It was not only such well-known personalities of non-mainstream Indian cinema, but the rank and file of film societies who were ardent leftists—some card-carrying members of the communist party, others Naxalites (Maoists in the 1960s and 1970s), and still others who harboured pronounced anti-state, left-oriented sympathies without any party affiliation.

⁷ Barnouw and Krishnaswamy in their influential study of Indian cinema argue that it was not until the mid 1960s that the movement acquired prominence in places such as Delhi, Kerala, and Hyderabad in Barnouw, Erik and Krishnaswamy, S., Indian Film, New York: Oxford University Press, 1980, pp. 249–250Google Scholar. I will demonstrate that the film society movement from the earliest years was all-India in scope.

⁸ Chidananda Dasgupta has the date of this society down as 1937, in Dasgupta, Chidananda, Seeing Is Believing, New Delhi: Penguin Viking, 2008, p. 84Google Scholar.

⁹ Indian Film Society News: Questionnaire for film societies in India, National Film Archives of India, Pune (compiled by Anil Srivastava), p. 11.

¹⁰ Rao, H. N. Narahari (ed.), The Film Society Movement in India, Mumbai: The Asian Film Foundation, 2009, p. 26Google Scholar.

¹¹ Chidananda Dasgupta, Seeing Is Believing, p. 84.

¹² I. K. Gujral who served as prime minister for a brief period and was a minister of information and broadcasting in the 1970s, was also treasurer of the Federation of film societies.

¹³ For details on the Patil committee and governmental involvement in Indian cinema more generally see, Rajadhyaksha, Ashish, Indian cinema in the time of celluloid: from Bollywood to the Emergency, Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press; Chesham: Combined Academic, 2009, pp. 231–254Google Scholar.

¹⁴ Indian Film Society News: Questionnaire for film societies in India, p. 2. Also see IFSON Special number, (3–17 January 1981), 21 Years of FFSI, ‘Recollections’, 3(1): 10. (The latter article was a reprint of an early report on the Calcutta Film Society that appeared in May/June 1949 issue of Indian Documentary edited by Jag Mohan.)

¹⁵ ‘Satyajit Ray on Early Days of CFS’, IFSON Special number, (3–17 January 1981), 21 Years of FFSI, 3(1): 11. The same passage appeared earlier in Satyajit Ray, Our Films Their Films, Calcutta: Orient Longman, 1976, p. 7.

¹⁶ Vijaya Mulay, ‘Patna Film Society’, IFSON Special number, p. 16.

¹⁷ Narahari Rao, The Film Society Movement in India, p. 19–20, my emphasis.

¹⁸ Bourdieu, Pierre, Distinction: A social critique of the judgement of taste, translated by Nice, Richard, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1984Google Scholar.

¹⁹ Satyajit Ray, Our Films Their Films, p. 12.

²⁰ Dasgupta, ‘Film Society Movement in India (1965)’, IFSON Special number, p. 30.

²¹ For discussions on the political and cultural significance of popular cinema see Chakravarty, Sumita, National Identity in Indian Popular Cinema, Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993Google Scholar; Dwyer, Rachel and Patel, Divia, Cinema India: The Visual Culture of Hindi Film, London, New York: Cassell, 2000Google Scholar; Dwyer, Rachel, All you want is money, all you need is love: sexuality and romance in modern India, New York: Cassell, 2000Google Scholar; Dwyer, Rachel and Pinney, Christopher, Pleasure and the Nation, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001Google Scholar; Vasudevan, Ravi, Making Meaning in Indian Cinema, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000Google Scholar; Prasad, Madhav, Ideology of Hindi Film, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998Google Scholar; Mazumdar, Ranjini, Bombay Cinema: An Archive of the City, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007Google Scholar; Pandian, M. S. S, The image trap: M.G. Ramachandran in film and politics, New Delhi: Sage, 1992Google Scholar; Dechamma, Sowmya and Prakash, Sathya (eds), Cinemas of South India, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2010Google Scholar; Gooptu, Sharmistha, Bengali Cinema: An Other nation, New Delhi: Roli, 2010Google Scholar.

²² Narahari Rao (ed), The Film Society Movement in India, p. 20, emphasis in the original.

²³ Satyajit Ray, Our Films Their Films, p. 6.

²⁴ Gopalakrishnan, cited in Bhaskaran, Gautaman, Adoor Gopalakrishnan: A Life in Cinema, New Delhi: Penguin Viking, 2010, p. 68Google Scholar.

²⁵ Wasi, Muriel, ‘Delhi Film Society’, in Rao, H. N. Narahari (ed.), The Film Society Movement in India, p. 27Google Scholar.

²⁶ Ibid.

²⁷ Vijaya Mulay, ‘Patna Film Society’, IFSON Special number, p. 16.

²⁸ Ibid., pp. 32–33.

²⁹ For details on the paucity of publications from other regions as well as more details on film society publications see Mrigankasekhar Roy, ‘Film Society Andolan: Ekti Khatiyan’ (Film Society Movement: An Assessment), Chitrabhaash, July–December, 1976, pp. 225–29. From the early 1970s, the number of publications from film societies based in southern India grew. See H. N. Narahari Rao (ed.), The Film Society Movement in India, pp. 136–139; 170–186.

³⁰ Indian Film Society News: Questionnaire for film societies in India, p. 2.

³¹ Ibid. p. 3.

³² Ibid. p. 7.

³³ According to the well-known singer and musician, Hemango Biswas the Russian delegation had a deep impact on many young Bengali cineastes. He wrote, ‘Mrinal Sen, Ritwik Ghatak, and Utpal Dutt were already involved in very serious thinking about cinema though they hadn't yet been able to make one. But I noticed Ritwik carrying on long discussions with them (Pudovkin and Chersakov) on cinema based on his sound knowledge and deep understanding of Eisenstein and Pudovkin’. Cited in Banerjee, Haimanti, Ritwik Kumar Ghatak: A Monograph, Pune: National Film Archive of India, 1985, p. 14Google Scholar.

³⁴ Ganguly, Keya, Cinema, Emergence, and the Films of Satyajit Ray, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010, p. 24Google Scholar.

³⁵ Jag Mohan, ‘Impact of the Film Society Movement’, IFSON Special number, p. 38.

³⁶ For a detailed account on the challenges of expanding the membership of the Calcutta Film Society, see Halder, Ram, Kathakata Kamalalaya O Proshongo Film Society, Calcutta: Anustup, 1989, pp. 44–48Google Scholar.

³⁷ Dasgupta, Chidananda, ‘Chalacitra Andolon: Kolkata Film Society’, Chalachitra, Calcutta: Signet Press, 1950, p. 155Google Scholar.

³⁸ Ram Halder, Kathakata Kamalalaya, p. 47.

³⁹ Reservations about swelling the membership ranks were not peculiar to the Calcutta Film Society alone. Muriel Wasi, a founding member of the Delhi Film Society also held the view that the only ‘passport to a film society’ should be a passionate interest in serious cinema. Muriel Wasi, ‘More About the Delhi Film Society’, IFSON Special number, p. 66.

⁴⁰ Haimanti Banerjee, Ritwik Kumar Ghatak: A Monograph, p. 15.

⁴¹ Anonymous, ‘The Front Cover’, Indian Film Culture, No. 4, September 1964, p. 12.

⁴² Anonymous, ‘Madras Film Society’, IFSON Special number, p. 15.

⁴³ Indian Film Documentary, July–September, 1955.

⁴⁴ Barnouw, Erik and Krishnaswamy, S., Indian Film, New York: Oxford University Press, 1980, p. 188Google Scholar. Barnouw and Krishnaswamy add that film societies were charged the same censorship rates as commercial theatres. ‘After January 1951, they included a fee of Rs. 40 per reel for films over 2,000 feet. A complete script, a synopsis in eight copies, and texts of songs in eight copies were needed’. Ibid.

⁴⁵ Ibid. p. 189.

⁴⁶ Ibid. p. 249.

⁴⁷ A report compiled by Dr Anil Varshney provides the following figures for the number of films imported. The films came mostly from foreign missions and in a few cases from the Film Finance Corporation (later renamed the National Film Development Corporation) and the National Film Archive of India. Dr Anil Varshney, ‘Highlights of FFSI's Twenty-one Years’, IFSON Special number, p. 73.

⁴⁸ Chidananda Dasgupta, ‘Film Society Movement in India (1965)’, IFSON Special number, p. 32.

⁴⁹ Dr Anil Varshney, ‘Highlights of FFSI's Twenty-one Years’, IFSON Special number, p. 74.

⁵⁰ IFSON Special number, p. 37. The same report cited earlier, compiled by Dr Anil Varshney offers ‘a model representation’ of the circulation of films between big city-based film societies and those located in small towns (mofussils). These figures are from 1978–1981. No figures are available for earlier years. Ibid., p. 74.

⁵¹ Anil Srivastava, ‘Bhopal Kids, Lucknow Film Society And IFSON’, IFSON Special number, p. 69.

⁵² Ibid.

⁵³ Halder, Ram, Kathakata Kamalalaya, Calcutta: Anustup, 1989, pp. 43Google Scholar.

⁵⁴ Ibid., pp. 43–44.

⁵⁵ For more details on the making of Pather Panchali (and the shelving of Home and the World) see Gooptu, Bengali Cinema: An Other Nation, pp. 223–227.

⁵⁶ For example, the Bombay group would directly contact the Secretary of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting or Mrs Gandhi the minister, every time they encountered the hurdle of censorship before showing a particular foreign film.

⁵⁷ Ram Halder, Kathakata Kamalalaya, p. 53.

⁵⁸ Ibid., pp. 55–56.

⁵⁹ Ram Halder, Kathakata Kamalalaya, p. 60; Words in parenthesis mine.

⁶⁰ Ibid., p. 52.

⁶¹ Ibid., p. 48.

⁶² Ibid., p. 55.

⁶³ Ibid., p. 53.

⁶⁴ David Bordwell, ‘Studying Cinema’, 2000, http://www.davidbordwell.net/essays/studying.php (accessed 26 August 2010).

⁶⁵ The endeavours of early film society activists share certain resemblances with Bordwell's descriptions of film fans. ‘Fan subcultures love to describe their favo[u]rite scenes, often in great detail, and sometimes they engage in analysis. Fans are also highly evaluative in their talk. . .but in intriguing ways the specialized discourse of fans runs parallel to that of academics’. in David Bordwell, Ibid.

⁶⁶ Chidananda Dasgupta, (1965), ‘Film Society Movement in India’, IFSON Special number, 1981, p. 31.

⁶⁷ Ibid.

⁶⁸ Ibid., p. 32.

⁶⁹ Roy, Mrigankasekhar, ‘Birth of a Film Culture’, in Mukhopadhyay, Bibhas (ed.), Chalachitra Charcha, no. 18, published during the 13th Calcutta Film Festival, 2009, p. 38Google Scholar.

⁷⁰ Comparing Indian popular cinema with cinemas abroad such as the Western, the musical, the crime thriller or suspense film, Dasgupta remarked ‘. . .the fact remains that these vastly popular forms. . .are basically cinema, no matter how far removed they may be from Bergman or Kurosawa or Satyajit Ray. The average product of the Indian film industry is not cinema at all; it is some totally indescribable entity which by sheer accident uses celluloid to propagate itself’. Dasgupta, (1965), ‘Film Society Movement in India’, IFSON Special number, p. 31.

⁷¹ Keya Ganguly, Cinema, Emergence, and the Films of Satyajit Ray, p. 24.

⁷² Mrigankasekhar Roy, ‘Film Society Andolan: Ekti Khatiyan’, p. 226.

⁷³ These numbers are taken from two reports published in IFSON Special number, 1981. See ‘Editorial’ p. 2 and ‘Highlights of FFSI's Twenty One Years’, p. 73.

⁷⁴ For more details on the economic crises facing Nehruvian India see Sau, Ranajit, Indian Economic Growth: Constraints and Prospects, Calcutta: Orient Longman, 1973Google Scholar; Chatterjee, Partha, The Nation and Its Fragments, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1993, pp. 205–211Google Scholar. For an overview of internal insurgencies, external conflicts with Pakistan and China, and the crisis that eventually led up to the declaration of national emergency in 1975 see Guha, Ramchandra, India After Gandhi, New Delhi: Picador, 2007Google Scholar.

⁷⁵ Mrigankasekhar Roy, ‘Birth of a Film Culture’, p. 41.

⁷⁶ The place of this movement in the national imaginary can be gauged by the fact that films continue to be made about it. Notable examples include, Haazaron Khwaishein Aisi, (Sudhir Misra, 2003) and Hazaar Chaurasi Ki Maa (Govind Nihalani, 1998).

⁷⁷ For details on the Naxalite movement see Ray, Rabindra, The Naxalites and their Ideology, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1988Google Scholar; Bannerjee, Sumanta, In the Wake of Naxalbari: A History of the Naxalite Movement in India, Calcutta: Subarnarekha, 1980Google Scholar; Franda, Marcus. F., Political Development and Political Decay in Bengal, Calcutta: Firma K. L. Mukhopadhyay, 1971Google Scholar; Franda, Marcus and Brass, Paul (eds), Radical Politics in South Asia, Cambridge: MIT Press, 1973Google Scholar. For a history of the political situation in India, and particularly Bengal, post 1947 see Chatterji, Joya, The Spoils of Partition, India and Bengal 1947–1967, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁷⁸ Ashis Rajadhyaksha, Indian Cinema in the Time of Celluloid, p. 239.

⁷⁹ Ibid., pp. 238–239.

⁸⁰ Ibid., p. 233.

⁸¹ Cited in Ibid., p. 238.

⁸² See for example Kabir, Nasrin Munni, Talking Films: Conversations with Javed Akhtar, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999, pp. 75–76Google Scholar.

⁸³ ‘The FFC is the saga of an Indian state initiative that supported an avant-garde practice through a massive media programme, but was in fact meant as an intervention in the Indian film industry as a whole’. Ashish Rajadhyaksha, Indian Cinema in the Time of Celluloid, p. 234.

⁸⁴ Ibid., p. 227.

⁸⁵ Willemen, Paul and Pines, James (eds), Questions of Third Cinema, London: BFI Publishing, 1989, pp. 6–7Google Scholar. For more details on Third Cinema manifestoes see the essays by Teshome Gabriel and Paul Willemen in this volume.

⁸⁶ Evans, Gary, John Grierson: Trailblazer of documentary films, Montreal: XYZ Publications, 2005Google Scholar; John Grierson and the National Film Board: the politics of wartime propaganda, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984.

⁸⁷ Ibid. p. 5.

⁸⁸ Arun Kaul, ‘Film Society Movement: 1965–1970’, IFSON Special number, p. 36.

⁸⁹ For a nuanced study of similar questions in literary radicalism in India see Priyamvada Gopal, Literary Radicalism in India, 2005 and Bhatia, Nandi, Acts of Authority/Acts of Resistance, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁹⁰ Dasgupta, Subhendu, ‘Ekjon Chalachitra Andolon Karmir Sakhatkar’ (Interview with a cinema worker), Silhouette (December 2004), 4: 97Google Scholar.

⁹¹ Biswas, Moinak, ‘The City and the Real: Chinnamul and the Left Cultural Movement in the 1940s’, in Karlsholm, Preben (ed.), City Flicks: Indian Cinema and the Urban Experience, Kolkata: Seagull books, 2004, pp. 40–59Google Scholar.

⁹² ‘Chalachitra Andolan ki Byarthotar Pathe?’ (Is the film-society movement heading towards failure?), Report on a discussion organized by North Calcutta Film Society, Cine Club of Naihati, and Film Study Circle, Asansol, Chitrabhaash, July–September, 1984, p. 50. For a broader discussion on the charge that many joined film societies to watch films that were sexually explicit see Suchitra Balasubrmaniam, Sagarmoy Paul, Arvind Lodaya, ‘Film Society Movement—An Overview’, in IFSON, 1984, pp. 82–84. The 1984 issue of IFSON, which was published to mark the silver jubilee of the Federation carried several articles that speculated on the reasons behind the eclipse of the film society movement from the early 1980s onward. See, Ashish Rajadhyakhsha, ‘A Film Society Movement’, pp. 50–51; Sanjiv Jhaveri, ‘Membership Imbroglio’, pp. 85–87; and all the articles contained under ‘Ahmedabad Conference’ pp. 71–90.

⁹³ See Gupta, Dhruba, ‘Film Society Andoloner Uddesho or Samasya’ (The Aims and Problems of the Film Society Movement), in Ghosh, Ashis (ed.), Chalachitra Katha, Calcutta, pp. 291–296Google Scholar.

⁹⁴ ‘Chalachitra Andolan ki Byarthotar Pathe?’ (Is the film-society movement heading towards failure?), p. 51.

⁹⁵ G. Aravindam, ‘Interviews’, IFSON, 1984, p. 15.

⁹⁶ Mention of film festivals of this kind—in villages, in factories—abound in film society writings. For examples, see Dasgupta, Suvendu, Chalachitra Anya Prabandha, Calcutta: Cine Club of Calcutta, 1999Google Scholar.

⁹⁷ The latter probably meant that the village had a school where instruction was offered up to the tenth grade.

⁹⁸ K. S. Raghavendra, ‘An Experiment with Rural Audience: Festival of film classics in a remote village in Karnataka’, IFSON special number, p. 41.

⁹⁹ Ibid. Words in parenthesis in the original.

¹⁰⁰ Ibid. p. 45.

¹⁰¹ Priyamvada Gopal, Literary Radicalism in India, pp. 4–12. Ashish Rajadhyaksha also comments on the explicit link made by directors like Kumar Shahani in his writings, anthologized in Framework, between the aesthetics and politics of filmmaking and similar debates, both contemporary and earlier ones, in theatre, literature and other visual arts. Rajadhyaksha briefly mentions the polemical writings by (and about) the three directors under discussion here. See Ashish Rajadhyaksha, Indian Cinema in the Time of Celluloid, pp. 242–249.

¹⁰² The films included Devi (The Goddess, 1959), Teen Kanya (Three Daughters, 1960), Kanchanjungha (1961), Abhijan (The Expedition, 1962), Mahanagar (The Big City, 1962), Charulata (The Lonely Wife, 1963), Kapurush O Mahapurush (The Coward and The Holy Man, 1964), Nayak (The Hero, 1965). For a rather heated and acerbic exchange between Ashok Rudra, Marie Seton, and Satyajit Ray around the film Abhijan see, Marie Seton, ‘Satyajit Ray's Abhijan’, Rudra, A., ‘Satyajit Ray's Optimism’, and ‘Satyajit Answers Critics’, in Dasgupta, Suvendu and Basu, Sakti (eds), Film Polemics, Calcutta: Cine Club of Calcutta, 1992, pp. 9–10Google Scholar.

¹⁰³ Ibid., p. 17.

¹⁰⁴ Ibid., p. 21.

¹⁰⁵ Anonymous letter, dated 1 September 1973, in the section entitled ‘Chocolate Cream Hunger’ in Film Polemics, pp. 104–105.

¹⁰⁶ Ashok Rudra, ‘In Defence of Padatik’, in Ibid., p. 95.

¹⁰⁷ Prabodh Dhar Chakraborty's letter published in the section entitled ‘Anger and After’ in Ibid., pp. 89–90.

¹⁰⁸ Ibid.

¹⁰⁹ Of particular note were Meghe Dhaka Tara (Cloud Capped Stars, 1960), Komal Gandhar (E-Flat, 1961), Subarnarekha (The Golden Line, 1962), Titas Ekti Nadir Naam (The River Named Titas, 1973), and Jukti Takko Ar Goppo (Reason, Argument, and Story, 1974).

¹¹⁰ Cited in Sarkar, Bhaskar, Mourning the Nation: Indian Cinema in the Wake of Partition, Durham: Duke University Press, 2009, p. 228CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹¹¹ Bagchi, Amiya Kumar, ‘Ritwik Ghatak’, in Dasgupta, and Basu, (eds), Film Polemics, p. 152Google Scholar.

¹¹² Ibid., p. 154.

¹¹³ Ibid., pp. 154–155. Ghatak's commitment to cinematically representing the chaotic nature of political decisions—past and present—was perhaps best illustrated in the lines uttered by the dying protagonist Neelkantha of Jukti, Takko, ar Goppo, ‘What political line or which ideology will steer the Indian or Bengal situation to the correct path, I do not know. I am confused, fully confused—I am searching, still searching. Are we all confused?’ This scene is invoked in many film society writings on Ghatak. Neelkantha (the blue-throated one), which is another name for the god Shiva, the Hindu deity whose throat had turned blue from the poison he drank to preserve the universe was Ghatak's flawed intellectual protagonist. Ghatak's works, despite his inability to complete many projects, secure funding from the state, and failure to win over large popular audiences, was seen by film society activists both in Bengal and elsewhere as one that most prominently bore the marks of the uncertainties that plagued every aspect of life in the postcolonial nation state. For more detailed accounts of these views see the essays collected in Ghosh, Gautam and Ray, Suranjan (eds), Chitrabhabna (Thoughts on Films), Ritwik Special Number, Calcutta: Federation of Film Societies for India (eastern region), 1997Google Scholar.

¹¹⁴ Khalid Mohamed, ‘The Movement to Blossom’, pp. 47–49; V. K. Dharamsey, ‘Perish We May’, pp. 60–64 in IFSON, (special edition edited by Amrit Gangar and V. K. Dharamsey),1984.

¹¹⁵ Film societies had from the first phase been engaged in making documentaries like Durga Puja, Portrait of a City, A City by the Sea.

¹¹⁶ This statement by Arun Kaul was made with particular reference to Kumar Shahani's films in IFSON, 1984, p. 89.

¹¹⁷ For an example essay by each one of these individuals see the collection edited by Basu, Sakti and Dasgupta, Suvendu, Chalacitre Bitarka (Debates on Cinema), Calcutta: Cine Club of Calcutta, 1992Google Scholar.

¹¹⁸ For an analysis of the ways in which some film society members, notably Chidananda Dasgupta and Kobita Sarkar, neglected to take seriously the nature of popular audiences see Vasudevan, Ravi, The Melodramatic Public: Film Form and Spectatorship in Indian Cinema, New York: Palgrave, Macmillan, 2010, pp. 75–81Google Scholar.