JEEVAN SMRITI - 'Selective Memories' - a Documentary film on Gurudeb Rabindranath Tagore by the eminent filmmaker Rituparno Ghosh is considered to be his last work before his untimely demise. Rituparno Ghosh made the film well earlier of his death. But, it was not released for Public due to some reasons. The director has tried to depict the life, feelings, ups & downs of the poet from his young age to old age in this film.
This Documentary is bilingual - Mostly English with a bit of Bengali. Samadarshi Dutta has played the role of 18-30 year's aged Rabindranath and National Winning Director Sanjay Nag has played the role of matured Tagore in the film. Raima Sen has played the role of Kadambari Debi. The Narration has been done by the dominants of Bengali / Indian cinema such as Anjan Dutt, Deepti Naval, Jagannath Guha, Anusuya Majumder, Joy Goswami and Rituparno Ghosh himself. Kaushiki Desikan and Srijan Chatterjee's renditions are literally jaw-dropping.
A few lines on Rabindranath Tagore:
Rabindranath Tagore sobriquet Gurudev, who reshaped Bengali literature and music, as well as Indian art with Contextual Modernism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Author of Gitanjali and its "profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse", he became the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913. Sometimes referred to as "the Bard of Bengal", Tagore's poetic songs were viewed as spiritual and mercurial; however, his "elegant prose and magical poetry" remain largely unknown outside Bengal.
A Pirali Brahmin from Calcutta with ancestral gentry roots in Jessore, Tagore wrote poetry as an eight-year-old.[10] At the age of sixteen, he released his first substantial poems under the pseudonym Bhānusiṃha ("Sun Lion"), which were seized upon by literary authorities as long-lost classics. By 1877 he graduated to his first short stories and dramas, published under his real name. As a humanist, universalist internationalist, and ardent anti-nationalist, he denounced the British Raj and advocated independence from Britain. As an exponent of the Bengal Renaissance, he advanced a vast canon that comprised paintings, sketches and doodles, hundreds of texts, and some two thousand songs; his legacy endures also in the institution he founded, Visva-Bharati University.
Tagore modernised Bengali art by spurning rigid classical forms and resisting linguistic strictures. His novels, stories, songs, dance-dramas, and essays spoke to topics political and personal. Gitanjali (Song Offerings), Gora (Fair-Faced) and Ghare-Baire (The Home and the World) are his best-known works, and his verse, short stories, and novels were acclaimed—or panned—for their lyricism, colloquialism, naturalism, and unnatural contemplation. His compositions were chosen by two nations as national anthems: India's Jana Gana Mana and Bangladesh's Amar Shonar Bangla. The Sri Lankan national anthem was inspired by his work.
Rituparno Ghosh (31 August 1963 – 30 May 2013) was an Indian film director, actor, writer and lyricist in the Bengali cinema. After pursuing a degree in economics he started his career as a creative artist at an advertising agency. In 1992, his debut film Hirer Angti released. In 1994, his next film Unishe April released which won National Film Award for Best Feature Film.
Ghosh was a self-professed Satyajit Ray fan and inspired other filmmakers like Mithaq Kazimi who adapted Ghosh's film Raincoat in English. In his career spanning almost two decades, he won 12 National and many International awards. Ghosh died on 30 May 2013 in Kolkata after a heart attack.
His unreleased Bengali movie named Taak Jhaank was honoured and released at the 19th Kolkata International Film Festival.
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