S.D. : Saroj Dutta and His Times
1hr 55min | Bengali | Documentary
A radical poet and journalist, a secret State killing, an attempted revolution sparked in the village of Naxalbari at the Himalayan foothills. Setting out to tell the story of the slain revolutionary Saroj Dutta (lovingly known as comrade S. D.), the film gets drawn into a vortex of his tumultuous times, tracing turns and twists of the communist movement in India over three decades. A search by present-generation filmmakers, the film invokes personal and public historical archives and conversations with rebels of the Naxalbari rebellion. Five decades later, the film holds a key to understanding the turbulent, audacious sixties and seventies in India and the world.
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Synopsis
A radical poet and journalist, a secret State killing, an attempted revolution sparked in the village of Naxalbari at the Himalayan foothills. Setting out to tell the story of the slain revolutionary Saroj Dutta (lovingly known as comrade S. D.), the film gets drawn into a vortex of his tumultuous times, tracing turns and twists of the communist movement in India over three decades. A search by present-generation filmmakers, the film invokes personal and public historical archives and conversations with rebels of the Naxalbari rebellion. Five decades later, the film holds a key to understanding the turbulent, audacious sixties and seventies in India and the world.
Filmmaker Bio
Mitali Biswas
Director/Producer
Mitali Biswas is a filmmaker, social activist and worked as a freelance journalist. In the year 2015, she directed and produced a documentary film titled 'Identity Undisclosed' on the theme of sexual violence against women. At present, she is in the editorial board of 'Protibidhan', a magazine dedicated to women's movements.
Kasturi Basu
Director/Producer
Kasturi Basu is an independent documentary filmmaker, activist, writer, and editor based in Kolkata, India. By training, she is a physicist, an alumnus of Jadavpur University, University of Cambridge, and Rutgers - the State University of New Jersey. She is a founder-member of the community radio station, ‘Radio Quarantine Kolkata’. Basu is founder-member of the ‘People’s Film Collective’ and 'People's Study Circle' based in Kolkata. She co-organizes the annual Kolkata People's Film Festival (2014 - present). Basu (along with Dwaipayan Banerjee) edited the book, ‘Towards a People’s Cinema: Independent Documentary and its Audience in India’ (2018) published by Three Essays Collective, New Delhi. Basu and Banerjee edit 'Pratirodher Cinema (translated as - Cinema of Dissent), a Bengali journal on documentary cinema and counterculture, since 2014. Basu's filmography includes ‘S.D. : Saroj Dutta and His Times’ (2018) (co-directed with Mitali Biswas) which won the 12th John Abraham award for the Best Documentary at the SiGNS Film Festival, Kerala, in 2018, and got screened at several prestigious documentary festivals including Film Southasia (Kathmandu), IDSFFK (Kerala) and the Kolkata People's Film Festival (KPFF). 'A Bid for Bengal' (2021), her second feature-length documentary (co-directed with Dwaipayan Banerjee) won the Kumar Talkies Award for Best Editing in Documentary at the International Documentary and Short Film Festival of Kerala (IDSFFK) 2021 and the Best Documentary award at the Chennai International Documentary and Short Film Festival (2022).
Credits
director: Kasturi Basu, Mitali Biswas
writer: Dwaipayan Banerjee
producer: Kasturi Basu, Mitali Biswas, Dwaipayan Banerjee
Associate Director: Dwaipayan Banerjee
Research: Kasturi Basu, Dwaipayan Banerjee, Mitali Biswas
Editor: Subhadipta Biswas
Cinematography: Debalina Majumdar, Kasturi Basu, Subhadipta Biswas
Sound Design and Mixing: Sukanta Majumdar, Anindit Roy
Location Sound: Sabyasachi Pal, Mitali Biswas
Music: Santajit Chatterjee