<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

<p>The experience of the cinema of Ritwik Ghatak (1925–1976), one of the most unusual filmmakers from South Asia, raises a significant issue, of how ritual can be considered a potent medium to have an intermedial effect within the complex mediality of cinema. The authors examine his film, <italic>The Cloud-Capped Star</italic> (<italic>Meghe Dhaka Tara</italic>, 1960), and show that in order to reach the “screaming point” of his “epic melodrama,” Ghatak borrowed form a forgotten ritual a fragment of a ritualistic song to become the experiential core for the experience of the film. The recurrent refrain of the song, at times the abstracted melody from the song creates a space of uncanny in-betweenness, contrasting positions of anthropological distance to a forgotten ritual with an imaginative yet guilt-ridden, painful projection of the secular self, being a part of that ritual itself.</p>
</abstract>

The experience of the cinema of Ritwik Ghatak (1925–1976), one of the most unusual filmmakers from South Asia, raises a significant issue, of how ritual can be considered a potent medium to have an intermedial effect within the complex mediality of cinema. The authors examine his film, The Cloud-Capped Star (Meghe Dhaka Tara, 1960), and show that in order to reach the “screaming point” of his “epic melodrama,” Ghatak borrowed form a forgotten ritual a fragment of a ritualistic song to become the experiential core for the experience of the film. The recurrent refrain of the song, at times the abstracted melody from the song creates a space of uncanny in-betweenness, contrasting positions of anthropological distance to a forgotten ritual with an imaginative yet guilt-ridden, painful projection of the secular self, being a part of that ritual itself.

Ritual as Intermedial Interjection in Ritwik Ghatak’s <italic>The Cloud-Capped Star</italic>

Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Ritual as Intermedial Interjection in Ritwik Ghatak’s 

The experience of the cinema of Ritwik Ghatak (1925–1976), one of the most unusual filmmakers from South Asia, raises a significant issue, of how ritual can be...

Ritual as Intermedial Interjection in Ritwik Ghatak’s The Cloud-Capped Star

Pubblicato online: 06 dic 2023

Pagine: 131 - 155

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/ausfm-2023-0017

Parole chiave
intermediality, Ritwik Ghatak, uncanny, ritual and cinema

© 2023 Sanskriti Chattopadhyay et al., published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Ritual as Intermedial Interjection in Ritwik Ghatak’s The Cloud-Capped Star

Pubblicato online: 06 dic 2023

Pagine: 131 - 155

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/ausfm-2023-0017

Parole chiaveintermediality, Ritwik Ghatak, uncanny, ritual and cinema

© 2023 Sanskriti Chattopadhyay et al., published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Parole chiave
intermediality, Ritwik Ghatak, uncanny, ritual and cinema