The Indian People's Theater Association (IPTA) on film: (Con)testing memory and history in the Bengali theaterscapes of Ritwik Ghatak's Komal Gandhar (E Flat, 1961)

Abstract

This piece focuses on the importance of Bengali filmmaker Ritwik Ghatak's Komal Gandhar (E Flat, 1961), in providing a cinematic representation of the methods, ideologies, and personalities of the Bengal IPTA, and how Ghatak's construction of the film – particularly his use of sound and song – powerfully expresses the significance of this theatrical movement in Bengal's cultural history. Specifically, I argue that the prominent role of theater in the film is a means of galvanizing the memory and debating the history of contentious, traumatic events of and around the 1947 Partition. I examine several sequences of rehearsals for and performances of both IPTA-like plays and the Indian classical drama Shakuntala to illustrate Ghatak's establishment of a dialectical dialogue between aural and visual elements, traditional and progressive culture, and ultimately, memory and history in this film.