Rituparno Ghosh

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Rituparno Ghosh (Bangla: ঋতুপর্ণ ঘোষ) is a young Bengali film director whose work has met with considerable critical acclaim in recent years, both in his native India and abroad.

He cut his directorial teeth in advertising. In 1992, he made a low-key film debut with a children's feature titled Hirer Angti (The Diamond Ring). However, with his second movie Unishe April (19th April), Ghosh attracted serious critical attention. The movie won the 1995 National Film Award in India for best film. Since then, Ghosh has directed a series of critical hits, notably Dahan, Utsab, Chokher Bali and Raincoat. His films, dissecting the minutiae of family and societal relationships, have led some critics to compare him with the great Bengali director Satyajit Ray.

Chokher Bali featured Aishwarya Rai, former Miss World and one of India's most popular film actresses. The resulting public visibility of this movie has catapulted Ghosh into the front ranks of the Indian film industry.

Ghosh was born and raised in Kolkata, West Bengal. He attended high school at South Point High School, and studied economics at Jadavpur University. His father was a documentary filmmaker, basically a painter, as was his mother in filmmaking.

In Ghosh's own words, "I was 14 then and I used to go to shoots with him, he was doing it in 16mm, using a hand-crank camera. The film was edited on our dining table, we had to eat elsewhere. I remember sorting out shots with him. So the whole miracle of filmmaking was demystified in front of me. I knew as a young child that it is not very difficult to become a filmmaker, you don't need to have special abilities or special training to be a filmmaker. At the age of 14 I knew what filmmaking entails: what is a rush print? How is it edited? What is a final print? When do you do mixing? What are the layers of sound? How do you mix them, how many tracks are possible? All the technicalities were clear to me because it was all happening at home. What is a sync sound? What is a foley sound? What is a non-sync sound? I knew all this."

Asked his viewpoint on the influence that the city of Calcutta exerted on him, Ghosh turns out to be an avid lover of the metropolis like his predecessor Ray: "Calcutta is critically important to my upbringing as a filmmaker, as a person, as who I am today. It is not Bengal, it is Calcutta, and the distinction between the two is important. The moment we talk about Calcutta we think of Satyajit Ray and Rabindranath Tagore, but Bengal is not that, Bengal is much more than that. It is a state which has been severely affected by Partition. Compared to the other states of India, West Bengal is far more progressive and I am very proud that I live there. Unlike Bombay, for instance, Calcutta has been completely unaffected by the rise of fundamentalist movements across the country."

Ghosh cites Ingmar Bergman, Krzysztof Kieślowski, Bille August, Quentin Tarantino, Abbas Kiarostami, Jafar Panahi, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Wong Kar-wai, and Pedro Almodóvar as directorial influences.

[edit] Filmography:

• Sunglass (2007)
• Dosar (2006)
• Antar Mahal (2005)
• Raincoat (2004)
• Chokher Bali (A Passion Play) (2003)
• Shubho Mahurat (2003)
• Titli (The First Monsoon Day) (2002)
• Utsab (The Festival) (2000)
• Asukh (Malaise) (1999)
• Bariwali (The Lady of the House) (1999)
• Dahan (Crossfire) (1997)
• Unishe April (19th April) (1994)
• Hirer Angti (The Diamond Ring) (1992)