Varieties of Melodrama: Guru Dutt and Ritwik Ghatak at 100

2025 marks the birth centenaries of two remarkable Indian filmmakers: Guru Dutt (1925-1964) and Ritwik Ghatak (1925-1976). Despite the shared year of their birth, it is hard to imagine two filmmakers more different from one another in their aesthetic sensibilities, political background and ideologies, professional success, and even the language of their films. Yet they share a commitment to melodrama as a political aesthetic. Our event aims to analyze global varieties of melodrama, using Dutt and Ghatak as points of orientation. V

Varieties of Melodrama (November 6-8, 2025) will be held between the Logan Center for the Arts and Cobb Hall. The film program, which will take place in the Logan Center Screening Room on Nov 6 +7, includes four titles: Kaagaz ke Phool (Paper Flowers, dir. Guru Dutt, 1959), Subarnarekha (The Golden Line, dir. Ritwik Ghatak, 1965), Aar Paar (This or That, dir. Guru Dutt 1954), and Meghe Dhaka Tara (The Cloud-Capped Star, dir. Ritwik Ghatak, 1960).

All are welcome to attend the subsequent full-day conference on November 8th in Cobb Hall 307. The conference will feature the following invited scholars:

Richard Allen

Manishita Dass

Tanya Desai

Cassandra Guan

Sangita Gopal

Neepa Majumdar

Rochona Majumdar

Daniel Morgan

Lakshmi Padmanabhan

Girish Shambu

Pamela Wojcik

All screenings are free and open to the public with first-come, first-served seating, but reservations for the conference are encouraged.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Cobb Hall, 5811 South Ellis Avenue, Chicago, United States

Concerts, fests, parties, meetups - all the happenings, one place.

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