Ajantrik
at the Kala Ghoda Festival today. From Ritwik Ghatak’s thoughts on the film: (from Rows and Rows of Fences: Ritwik Ghatak on Cinema)
The story has a ramshackle car as its central character. This very fact threw up so many plastic and dynamic potentialities. I could always fall back upon mechanical speed- what with opportunities of bringing in the time-honoured mechanism of the chase and hair-breadth escapes and breakdowns at judiciously chosen moments!The part where Jagaddal climbs up the hill, slowly, painfully… I loved that best about the film...We had to work with the poorest possible materials and that, too, on a shoe-string budget. This film threw us a challenge at every step. Every shot taken was every shot achieved. This seemed to me to be really invigorating. It is a situation in which one curses oneself at every step and likes it.
