BackThe Cloud-Capped Star
(Meghe Dhaka Tara) (book in English)
- Type
- Studies
- Subject
- One Film > The Cloud-Capped Star
- Ritwik Ghatak, India
- Publishing Date
- 2020
- Publisher
- BFI Publishing
- Collection
- BFI Film Classics
- Language
- English
Relative size
- Physical desc.
- Paperback • 112 pages • 16 €
5 ½ x 7 ½ inches (14 x 19 cm) - ISBN
- 978-1-8387-1999-9
- User Ratings
(0 vote)Average rating:
0 rating 
= We can do without0 rating 
= Good book0 rating 
= Excellent book0 rating 
= Unique / a referenceYour rating: -
Book Presentation:
Ritwik Ghatak's The Cloud-Capped Star (Meghe Dhaka Tara, 1960) has been hailed as 'one of the great classics of world cinema' (Adrian Martin), and 'one of the five or six greatest melodramas in cinema history' (Serge Daney). A striking blend of modernist aesthetics and melodramatic force, it is arguably the best-known film by Ghatak, widely considered to be one of the most original, politically committed, and formally innovative film-makers from India. The film's focus on a family uprooted by the Partition of India and its powerful exploration of displacement and historical trauma gives it a renewed relevance in the midst of a global refugee crisis.
Manishita Dass situates the film in its historical and cultural contexts and within Ghatak's film-making career, and connects it to his theatrical work and his writings on film and theatre. Her close reading of the film locates its emotional and intellectual power in what she describes as its 'cinematic theatricality, ' and brings into focus Ghatak's modernist experiments with melodramatic devices, his deliberate departures from cinematic realism, and distinctive use of sound and music.
The book draws on extensive archival research, excavates new layers of meaning, and offers fresh insights into the cosmopolitan cinematic sensibility of a director described as 'one of the most neglected major film-makers in the world' (Jonathan Rosenbaum).
See the publisher website: BFI Publishing
See The Cloud-Capped Star on IMDB ...
> On a related topic:
India (1997)
Rossellini et les animaux
Dir. Nathalie Bourgeois and Bernard Bénoliel
Subject: One Film > India: Matri Bhumi
The Films of Zoya Akhtar (2024)
Dir. Aakshi Magazine and Amber Shields
(in English)
Subject: Director > Zoya Akhtar
Cinémas de Bombay (2024)
La fabrique collective du rêve
The Films of Shyam Benegal (2023)
Dir. Sneha Kar Chaudhuri and Ramit Samaddar
(in English)
Subject: Director > Shyam Benegal
Note: A book on a slightly gray background is a book that is no longer currently published or that may be difficult to find in bookstores. The shown price is that of the book at its release, the price on the second-hand market may be very different.
A book on a beige background is a book published in a language other than French.