11. Surja Dighal Bari (The Ominous House, Masihuddin Shaker and Sheikh Niamat Ali, 1979)
“Surjo Dighal Bari” is one of the best movies made in Bangladesh until today in terms of its aesthetic apposition and international acclaim. It was the debut feature of two film society activists Masihuddin Shaker and Sheikh Niamat Ali. It is the first film made from the grant of Bangladesh government. The film was critically acclaimed but was a box office failure. Based on Abu Ishaque's novel of the same title, this neo-realist movie is the story of a rural woman's struggle for survival.
In the time of Bengal famine during WWII, Jaygoon comes back to a village from the town, with her three children and late brother's wife and builds a thatched house at an abandoned land at the corner of the village. People used to call the bushy place as an ominous land and now they startcalling the house an ominous house. While fighting with poverty, the village headman's lust towards Jaygoon, makes her life miserable. Her second husband who once abandoned her, also gets back his interest towards Jaygoon. The headman kills his competitor, while the second husband and Jaygoon are the eyewitness of the murder. She has to pay the price for this – headman's people burn the ominous house and Jaygoon has to leave the village again.
12. Rupali Soikote (The Loner, Alamgir Kabir, 1979)
“Rupali Saikote” narrates a journalist's struggle to establish democratic rights in East Pakistan during the 1960s military regime of Ayub Khan. It is loosely autobiographical but Kabir's experiences are split in two characters – Lenin, the journalist and left activist, and Anwar, the fighter in the Palestine liberation war based in Lebanon. Lenin (as Kabir did) studies in London and starts publishing a magazine both in English and Bengali there, in support of the political movement in East Pakistan. He also forms a radical guerrilla group there who would go back to Dhaka and start guerrilla actions to free Bangladesh from the colonial military regime of West Pakistan. Additionally, Lenin's (as well as Kabir's) visit to Algeria and Cuba revolutions for training purposes also is brought up in the film. Like Kabir, Lenin is arrested too by the government and stays in the jail for a few months. The film includes some real incidents in the storyline such as the sanction on shooting of the film “Jibon Theke Neya” (Taken from Life) by Zahir Raihan or the attack on Professor Abu Mahmud of Dhaka University by government party goons. The real footage of Zahir Raihan's shooting or Professor Mahmud's interview after the attack are used in the film. Inserting documentary footage in the fiction film is a signature of Kabir's filmmaking style.
However, the movie also spends a lot of space on the radical journalist Lenin's love life. Sharmin has been loving Lenin for years, but he is not ready to marry her due to his unstable journalistic career. Also, Sharmin's bourgeoise father's condition of marrying her – to leave his journalistic job and to take over half of the industrial ventures of father's company – compels Lenin to break-up with Sharmin. After his release from jail where he was mercilessly beaten in remand, shattered Lenin goes to a remote silver beach on an assignment where Anna and her mother run a guesthouse, the place he visited once earlier at the beginning of the film. Lenin proposes to Anna but she had been waiting for her fiancé Anwar who was supposed to return from Lebanon. Lenin manages to convince Anna that Anwar will not be coming. However, just after Anna decides not to wait for him anymore, Anwar returns, and Lenin leaves the silver beach.
13. Ghuddi (Syed Salahuddin Zaki, 1980)
Syed Salahuddin Zaki depicts the post-Liberation Bangladesh from the point of view of a group of youths. After a decade of liberation, the freedom fighter Asad (with a pseudo name Muhabbat, literally meaning love) lives in a tiny one-room apartment, wears a shirt borrowed from friend's laundry and uses a friend's car to impress girls. He get the attention of a beautiful girl Ghuddi (literally meaning the kite), an architecture student and a daughter of a ‘once a communist turned a rich man'. Ghuddi has a bunch of friends, who range from band musicians to left activists, who represent the growing urban cultural modernity in late 1970s, in Dhaka. However, Muhabbat, a jobless middle class young man appears as a happy-go-lucky fella who lacks morality (he tells lies to Ghuddi about his profession and financial condition) but has no regret for his deceits or parasitic acts. He is or was loaded by ideologies (the portraits of Mao Tse-tung and local Maoist leader Mowlana Bhasani are hanged on the wall of his bedroom) but he makes fun out of it (he declares himself a ‘Sunday Communist'). These signify the frustration of the young generation who fought for liberation in 1971 but got frustrated in the post-liberation socio-political climate. Their dream for democratic rights, social justice and financial solvency were not fulfilled. Muhabbat often says in the film he is looking for something – might be a new country Bangladesh he dreamt for before or during the Liberation War. However, his deceits aare revealed to Ghuddi and he disappears from the town. She receives mental support from her friend Tariq, but deceived Ghuddi's depression went on. Muhabbat write a letter to Tariq from an unknown place, seemingly as a changed person. At the end, Ghuddi finds repentant Muhabbat and the duo unite once more.
Dialogues thrown by the characters often lack clarity, sometimes sound abstract and extra poetic. Some ideas and themes projected by the characters are not much relevant to the narrative. However, the film successfully portrays Dhaka-based cultural modernity and westernized urbanity with a blend of Bengali cultural heritage. The frustration of post-liberation youth was also rightly addressed in the film.
14. Emiler Goyenda Bahini (Emil and the Detectives, Badal Rahman, 1980)
Based on Erich Kastner's book, “Emiler Goyenda Bahini” (Emil and the Detectives) is Badal Rahman's debut feature. It is considered as one of the best children films ever made in Bangladesh. Emil, the only son of a widow, is invited to the capital city Dhaka to receive the best prize in a writing competition. He travels by train with s house servant and his working mother would join him later in Dhaka. He is carrying money given by his mother to hand over to his aunt in whose home he was supposed to stay. On his trip, he loses his money and suspects two men. After reaching Dhaka, he follows them. While doing so, some Dhakite children and an inexperienced detective uncle joined him. The amateur detective team discovers one suspect is an infamous bank robber and the other a real detective officer of a government agency. The robber is caught, Emil gets back his money and finds his name in the newspaper report mentioning him as a hero.
Though the film is an adaptation from a German book, the director tried to contextualize the story, such as Emil's father was killed in 1971 Liberation War by Razakars (local collaborators to Pakistani Army). The comic scenes are not always neat. However, the children actors perform very well.
15. Dohon (Affliction, Sheikh Niamat Ali, 1985)
Set in the 1980s Dhaka, “Dohon” is the story of Munir, a university graduate who is looking for a job. He earns petty money by writing in newspaper and tutoring a college girl Ivy. He runs a lower middle-class family where old mother, younger sister and maternal uncle are the members. Ivy has love interest to Munir though she is engaged with a man living in Germany but has lost contact with him. Munir decides to start a partnership business with his friend Sadik and borrows the initial capital from another friend. Sadik's ‘manpower business' is to send labour forces overseas. Due to Sadik's failure to do so, however, the office is looted by deceived people and Munir struggles to get back the invested money from shrewd Sadik. Munir's uncle, a politically heated and mentally imbalanced old man, leaves home. Cheated by the boyfriend, the sister also follows the uncle. Ivy's fiancé comes back after three years and she accepts the family's decision to marry him. Everything ισ falling around and Munir's afflictions continuemounting.
Sheikh Niamat Ali's attempt to present several messages to the audience is evident in the film; sometimes sounding like slogans, yet the movie substantially depicts the socio-cultural scenario of Dhaka in 1980s. Lower middle-class families fighting against poverty, a limited job market and the frustration of the young generation, some people are getting rich quickly through shady businesses, political corruption – these were the facts in the 1980s. Through Munir, who likes to walk in streets, city life is inserted within the narrative – a mix of ordinary peoples' hardship as well as enjoyment.
16. Beder Meye Josna (Gypsy Girl Josna, Tojammel Haque Bokul, 1989)
In the late 1980s, “Beder Meye Josna” directed by Tozammel Haque Bakul appeared as a surprise in the industry. It created a record of the most commercially successful film in the history of Bangladesh and the record persists until today. The film was remade in Kolkata, India and it too was a blockbuster hit there. The success of “Beder Meye Josna” reminds the success of 1965's film “Roopban”. Both films are adapted from local theatrical form “Jatra” plays. In the 1960s, “Roopban” established the industry as a social institution. And in the 1980s, due to the advent of VCR and VCP, people started leaving cine theatres and enjoying foreign films (largely Hindi and Bengali films from India) at home. In that context, “Beder Meye Josna” brought back the spectators to cinema halls, but unlike “Roopban”, it could not bring any long-term impact in the industry.
A poisonous snake bites the local prince and a bede (gypsy man) is called to cure the prince. After the primary examination of the wound, he declares that only Josna can extract the poison from the prince's blood. The king calls Josna and asks her to save his son, in exchange for which he agrees to give her anything she wants. Josna cures the prince but becomes ill in the process. After the recovery, she demands the prince himself as her reward, but the king refuses to do that. When the prince, now recovered, comes to know of everything, he falls in love with Josna. After a long tussle, the couple persuade the king to consent to their relationship.
17. Chaka (The Wheel, Morshedul Islam, 1993)
Based on the play of the same title by eminent playwright Selim Al Deen, it is a story of the struggle of two bullock cart drivers to bury an unidentified body. The local administration of a small town forces them to carry the body to a particular village where the dead body belongs to. But the two drivers fail to find the family of the unclaimed body in the said village and they bury him under the clay of a river. The film is basically the long and slow journey of these two unwilling people on a bullock cart with a dead body.
Someway symbolic in theme (the dead body might be the symbol of the society or culture or the time) “Chaka” is especially important for its slow, long takes of the progression of the bullock cart in the exotic village roads. The film not only earned awards in international festivals, it was also the first Bangladeshi feature film to receive commercial distribution from a French company.
18. Muktir Gaan (Song of Freedom, Tareque and Catherine Masud, 1995)
Based on the found footage shot by American filmmaker Lear Levin, Tareque Masud and Catherine Masud narrate the activities of a cultural troupe named ‘Bangladesh Mukti Sangrami Shilpi Sangstha' (Association of Artists for Freedom of Bangladesh) during the Liberation War of Bangladesh in 1971. The troupe used to travel to refugee camps and different places in the liberated areas. They performed patriotic songs, arranged puppet shows and staged dramas to inspire the freedom fighters and lift the spirit of war affected people.
The documentary became very popular when the greater audience first time saw 1971 war in colour – in both Levin's footage and other archival footage collected from India and the UK. Through alternative distribution, the film was screened throughout the country which tells the birth of a nation and the ideals of secularism and Bengali nationalism on which the country was founded. The film also contributed to bring back the spirit of the Liberation War which was nearly absent in the politico-cultural scenario for decades.
19. Chitra Nadir Pare (Quiet Flows the River Chitra, Tanvir Mokammel, 1999)
Set in the post-1947 partition of India, in the bank of the river Chitra, at a small south-western town of East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), many Hindu people were migrating to India, but a stubborn lawyer Shashikanta refuses to leave his motherland. Widower Shashikanta has a daughter Minoti and an old sister. Minoti has a love relation with a Muslim neighbour Badal who studies in Dhaka University. Both places got heated in 1960s – autonomous movement against Pakistani military regime in Dhaka, in which Badal was active, and a fresh riot at the bank of Chitra in 1964. Minoti loses two of his most beloved people – Shashikanta dies due to heart attack and Badal is killed by police fire in a procession. Also, the communal tension mounts in the locality. At the end, she and her aunt leave the bank of Chitra for India.
It is the first feature film made by any Bangladeshi director that addresses the 1947 Partition of India. The story of the film is also extended to the autonomous movement in the 1960s that led to the 1971 Liberation War. The film also portrays the communal politics in Bangladesh germinated in per-Partition Indian politics as well as the progressive stances against the communal politics.
20. Porobasi Mon Amar (My Migrant Soul, Yasmine Kabir, 2000)
The film highlights the plight of the Bangladeshi migrant workers overseas. The documentary tells the story of Shahjahan Babu, a migrant worker, who leaves Bangladesh for Malaysia for a happy future. However, the reality is quite opposite. Having sold his only piece of property and having a dream of a better life, the young man reaches there only to experience disillusionment, misery and frustration. Due to the fraudulence of the brokers and Adam-traders of both countries he discovers himself being illegal and dies in the detention camp from illness. Prior to his death, Babu sends audiotapes to his family, in which he recounts his bitter experiences in Malaysia. Along with the fresh interviews of his mother and sister back in Bangladesh, these tapes are used as a running narrative throughout the film. The description of Babu's sufferings and despair is woven into the film with the songs sung by him on the tape. Babu compares living there with slavery – “In a marketplace, like fish and vegetables, humans are being bought and sold”.
After 20 years since the making of “Porobasi Mon Amar”, people are still going to Malaysia or in different Middle Eastern countries as migrant workers and the remittance Bangladesh gets from them is one of the major sources of the bulk reserve of Bangladeshi economy; however, there is a little change in their misery.
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Fahmidul Haq is visiting professor at Notre Dame University, USA in the Department of Film Television and Theatre. He is also professor at University of Dhaka, Bangladesh. Email: [email protected].
Note: Most of the posters use in this article are collected from Mir Shamsul Alam Baboo.
