MUBI India’s ongoing retrospective of Amit Dutta’s films gives viewers a chance to see a contemporary body of work that is not only bold a...
MUBI India’s ongoing retrospective of Amit Dutta’s films gives viewers a chance to see a contemporary body of work that is not only bold and challenging, but also stirringly beautiful to watch. The weaving of sounds and images with rare archival music recordings that run like a thread through many of the films are like whispers, prompting us to explore the vast ocean of Indian arts and creative practices, both traditional and modern.
Dutta belongs to a small band of independent filmmakers in India who persist in exploring and expanding the possibilities of the film medium. His films are situated at the intersection of Indian art history, philosophy, literature and narrative traditions articulated through formal experimentation with the devices of cinema. In this ambitious project he may be reckoned to be extending the work of earlier great avant-garde filmmmakers like Ritwik Ghatak, Kumar Shahani, and particularly Mani Kaul, whose elliptical and layered aural and visual style is perhaps the chief influence on Dutta’s films.
However, in contrast with his predecessors, Dutta’s films bring to the fore a newer sensibility that is not soaked to the same extent with the sensual dimension, ideological impulses or the gender-conscious trope of the Mother Goddess myth. Instead, Dutta...
