Home / Sunday-mid-day / / Article /
36 Memory Lane
Updated On: 11 February, 2024 07:32 AM IST | Mumbai | Sucheta Chakraborty
Suman Ghosh takes Aparna Sen back to the locations of some of her early films in a new documentary on her life and work. mid-day gets together with the two filmmakers to discuss cherished characters, influences and changes in Bengali film viewership
Director Suman Ghosh accompanies Sen to the locations where she shot films like 36 Chowringhee Lane, Paroma and Paromitar Ek Din to jog Sen’s memories of working on these projects
I still think that 36 Chowringhee Lane was like a love affair. It’s my first film. I lived and breathed [that film]. As my daughter said, I was consumed by it. But you go past that, you move on. You don’t remain in 36 Chowringhee Lane forever,” filmmaker, screenwriter and actress Aparna Sen tells us on a video call from her home in Shantiniketan. Espousing the lessons learnt from a book like Eugen Herrigel’s Zen in the Art of Archery, she speaks of how she finds little value in dwelling on past achievements. “It’s more like every time I see one of my older films, all that jumps out at me are the flaws.”
Sen’s past accomplishments are however, the focus of Parama: A Journey With Aparna Sen, a documentary by director Suman Ghosh which saw its world premiere at the International Film Festival Rotterdam. It was screened alongside Sen’s own film Paroma, a radical portrait of female self-discovery, which ironically, as Sen tells us, was not invited to any international fest at the time of its release. “It was perceived that the issue it discussed was kind of passé as far as the international audience was concerned. Today, it’s come back [because] they think it’s relevant, but at that time they didn’t.”
Read Next Story
Trending Stories
Latest Photos
Latest Videos
Latest Web Stories
ADVERTISEMENT
Mid-Day Fast
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT