Docu-Forum
S.D. : Saroj Dutta and His Times

Wed, 05.09.2018
6:30 PM Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan Kolkata

Directed by Kasturi Basu and Mitali Biswas
115 mins/ 2018/ India/ Bengali with English subtitles

A communist poet, 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 (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 uses personal and public historical archives and conversations with rebels of the Naxalbari rebellion.
 
Kasturi Basu is a filmmaker, social activist, science researcher, occasional writer and editor based in Kolkata. She is a founder member and film movement activist with the People’s Film Collective, and co-editor of Protirodher Cinema, a magazine on cinema and counterculture. She has co-edited a volume Toward’s a People’s Cinema: Independent Documentary and its Audience in India published by Three Essays Collective. S.D. : Saroj Dutta and His Times is her first film.

Mitali Biswas is a social activist and worked as a freelance journalist (1998-99). In the year 2015, she directed and produced a documentary film titled Naam Poribortito (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.