The most credible doyen of alternative Indian cinema, Ritwik Ghatak spent his lifetime in the shadow of the stalwart Satyajit Ray, and has only posthumously begun to receive some measure of the attention he deserves.

Born in 1925 in Bangladesh and brought up in pre-Partition Bengal, Ritwik spent his childhood savoring the river Padma, and the folktales, folk songs and festivals of Bengal. Ritwik moved to Calcutta in the early 1950s, just before the full bloom of the Communist movement in West Bengal, and after graduating in English literature, was gradually drawn into the world of literary journals, drama, and dramatic movements led by the Indian People's Theatre Association (IPTA).

Ghatak's classics, which include Meghe Dhaka Tara ("Stars hidden by Clouds") are innovative and experimental in form, style and subject, and take the viewers in sensual journeys beyond anything Bengali cinema had ventured into. Over and over, the violence and pain of Partition appears as a recurring theme in his cinema.

In his words, "Cinema for me is nothing but an expression. It is a means of expressing my anger at the sorrows and sufferings of my people. Tomorrow, beyond cinema, man's intellect may probably rear something else that may express the joys, sorrows, aspirations, dreams and ideals of the people with a force and immediacy stronger than that of the cinema. That would then be the ideal medium."