Brilliant and eclectic filmmaker (1970-2015)
Bappaditya Bandopadhyay, a contemporary filmmaker within Bengali cinema, whose fame spread wider beyond Indian shores than within, passed away in a private nursing home in Kolkata on 7 November 2015, of multiple organ failure. He was only 45. He contracted pneumonia while shooting continuously for 19 days in the rains at Cherapunji for his new film, Sohra Bridge. Ironically, the film was screened in the Indian Panorama section of the International Film Festival of India.
Bappaditya was noted for his choice of strikingly unusual subjects for his films. Among these are Sampradaan, a film made for a satellite channel. Then followed Shilpantar, based on a scary story by Sirsendu Mukhopadhyay, few directors would dare to touch. Kantataar and Kaal, focussed on varied dimensions of the woman in contemporary India. While Kantataar (Barbed Wire) dealt with the identity crisis of a homeless young woman who is caught in the midst of border terrorism along the India-Bangladesh border in India, Kaal was on the trafficking of young girls from villages, establishing Bappaditya firmly in the international circuit, though the films did not do well commercially back home. He made Devi in Hindi and English with Perizaad Zorabian and Suman Ranganathan that demonstrated how two very different women from two disparate backgrounds, one rural and one urban, were victims of patriarchy, never mind the surface differences in their lifestyles and their class. He followed up with Housefull, Kagojer Bou, Elar Char Adhyay, which was adapted from Rabindranath Tagore’s novel, and Nayika Sangbad which, sadly, was a washout. This was the last film released during his lifetime. “My first film Sampradaan was based on Ramapada Chowdhury’s novel. Shilpantar was based on Sirshendu Mukhopadhyay’s short story ‘Patua Nibaran’. Kantatar was based on Debasish Bandyopadhyay’s novel. Only Housefull and Kaal were based on my own stories”, he had said.
Houseful was a partly autobiographical account of a film director who makes off-beat films that fail to draw an audience, and the director watches the film in empty theatres. The one quality that distinguishes Bappaditya Bandopadhyay’s Houseful is that it has strong autobiographical elements. Prosenjit’s look is fashioned after Bappaditya who wears a beard. Each time Nikhil’s mobile rings, it is Bappaditya’s cell-phone ring tone that belts out Gautam Chatterjee’s famous Mohimer Ghodaguli number.
Bappaditya’s style was characterised by the use of the surreal in his characterisations, in his shot structures and incidents. Though this creates some confusion in the beginning, one gets used to the language with time. Sirsendu Mukhopadhyay’s stories are perhaps the most challenging to place on celluloid. This becomes more challenging when the filmmaker has to create the time-leap from the original story written around 30 years ago to bring it to contemporary times where the core ideology or, rather, the lack of it, is represented by the protagonist Upal in 2010. Bappaditya makes the time-leap convincing without taking liberties with the core in the original. Few know that he was also a poet of repute. His published work of poetry includes Pokader Atmiyaswajan (Friends and Relatives of Insects) and his poetic sensibility was reflected in his films.
His brief career was generously dotted with awards aplenty. Sampradan won the Best Supporting Actress Award, the Best Supporting Actor Award and the Best Female Playback Singer award at the Bengal Film Journalists Association that year, and the Dishari Award for the Best Music. Debasree Roy won the Kalakar Award for Best Actress for her performance in Shilpantar. Kantataar was screened at around 17 film festivals across India and beyond. It bagged for Sreelekha Mitra two Best Actress Awards, and one Best Supporting Actor Award for Rudraneel Ghosh. Bappaditya also directed a television serial, Ananda Nagarir Kathakatha, on the architectural history of Kolkata for a popular Bengali television channel. His documentary on tribal masks was broadcast on Doordarshan. He was planning to make a lengthy documentary on renowned painter Hemendra Majumdar.