Release Date: September 10, 2019
Prices and Links:
Criterion: $31.96
Amazon: $27.37
Director: Ritwik Ghatak
Directed by the visionary Bengali filmmaker Ritwik Ghatak, The Cloud-Capped Startells the story of a family that has been uprooted by the Partition of India and come to depend on its eldest daughter, the self-sacrificing Neeta (Supriya Choudhury). She watches helplessly as her own hopes and desires are pushed aside time and again by those of her siblings and parents, until all her chances for happiness evaporate, leaving her crushed and sickly. Experimenting with off-balance compositions, discontinuous editing, and a densely layered soundtrack, Ghatak devised an intellectually ambitious and emotionally devastating new shape for the melodrama, lamenting the tragedies of Indian history and the inequities of traditional gender roles while blazing a formal trail for the generations of Indian filmmakers who have followed him.
The Cloud-Capped Star was restored in partnership with The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project and the Cineteca di Bologna, from elements preserved by the National Film Archive of India.
SPECIAL FEATURES
New 2K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
New conversation between filmmakers Saeed Akhtar Mirza and Kumar Shahani
Stills gallery of Ghatak family photographs curated by writer and photographer Nabarupa Bhattacharjee
New English subtitle translation
PLUS: An essay by film scholar Ira Bhaskar
Prices and Links:
Criterion: $31.96
Amazon: $27.37
Director: Ritwik Ghatak
- India
- 1960
- 127 minutes
- Black & White
- 1.37:1
- Bengali
Directed by the visionary Bengali filmmaker Ritwik Ghatak, The Cloud-Capped Startells the story of a family that has been uprooted by the Partition of India and come to depend on its eldest daughter, the self-sacrificing Neeta (Supriya Choudhury). She watches helplessly as her own hopes and desires are pushed aside time and again by those of her siblings and parents, until all her chances for happiness evaporate, leaving her crushed and sickly. Experimenting with off-balance compositions, discontinuous editing, and a densely layered soundtrack, Ghatak devised an intellectually ambitious and emotionally devastating new shape for the melodrama, lamenting the tragedies of Indian history and the inequities of traditional gender roles while blazing a formal trail for the generations of Indian filmmakers who have followed him.
The Cloud-Capped Star was restored in partnership with The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project and the Cineteca di Bologna, from elements preserved by the National Film Archive of India.
SPECIAL FEATURES
New 2K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
New conversation between filmmakers Saeed Akhtar Mirza and Kumar Shahani
Stills gallery of Ghatak family photographs curated by writer and photographer Nabarupa Bhattacharjee
New English subtitle translation
PLUS: An essay by film scholar Ira Bhaskar
Last edited:
