Publication: Many Spaces in / of Cinema ; Ritwik Ghatak's Filims
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Date
2025-01-07
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Indian Institute of Technology, Jodhpur
Abstract
This project on film aesthetics explores how space operates in films as both a physical construct and a conceptual apparatus. Primarily through mise-en-scène analysis, I look into how the filmed spaces of the pro-filmic spaces contribute to the visual and sensory encounter of the filmic spaces. I study how the filmmaker creates, represents, philosophizes space in films. And, thus, I seek the strata of significance woven into cinematic spaces. The thesis concentrates on spatial dynamics in films through a case study of Ritwik Ghatak’s cinematic oeuvre. By analyzing the filmmaker’s use of the spatial centres, and spatial dynamics, the study uncovers the apparent thematic meanings embedded in the spaces of the films. It looks at the marginalized middle-class experience in the metropolitan city space, the cultural tensions in the adivasi space, and the yearning for an idealized rural space. Through camerawork, the filmmaker critiques urban alienation, and romanticizes the lost harmony of rurality. It then delves into the suburban space of refugee colonies. Utilizing landscapes, and intertextuality to depict the trauma of loss, and the yearning for a unified homeland, the films capture the fragmentedness of spaces. The emphasis of the thesis, next, moves to the sublime space of riverine landscapes as metaphysical representations of a land’s eternal essence. The filmmaker constructs a sublime spatio-temporality. It speculates on the resilience of the land by means of the interaction between river and people, by addressing existential concerns. It, further, focuses on the filmmaker’s dialogic approach in discursive spaces where spatiality becomes a medium for political discourse. By means of journeys across cityscapes, rural spaces, and ultimately forests, the filmmaker offers critiques of the contemporary. The dissertation concludes by theorizing the filmmaker’s legacy as a modernist filmmaker by using space to evoke regional, national, and global cultural dialogues in creative collision. Such utilization of a relay of space, sound, and images redefines spatiality in Indian cinema. The study highlights the power of the medium called cinema to transform space into a narrative agent, by offering insights into human existence.
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Barman, Bhairab (2020).Many Spaces in / of Cinema ; Ritwik Ghatak's Filims (Doctor's thesis).Indian Institute of Technology, Jodhpur