Title of film : THE THISTLE BALL
Director Name : RAMKRISHNA CHANDA,BIPLAB DAS
Cast & crew :
Producer : BLACKMILK PRODUCTION
Editor : Sourim Pal
Cast :
Synopsis : THE THISTLE BALL Shibotosh Chatterjee is an elderly Bengali common man. In his middle class household, he lives with his wife, son, daughter-in-law and his grandson. Shibotosh is suffering from ailments of old age. One of which is loss of memory, however he is remembering about his childhood days now and then. Doctors are till not sure about the specific diagnosis, primarily they have detected it to be Dementia. Recently Sibotosh was reading a book about Nineteenth century Bengali renaissance. One of the key faces of Bengali renaissance, Ramtanu Lahiri had thrown away his sacred thread - the representation of his religion -to send a message to the deeply superstitious society. However such denouncement of religious beliefs proved to be dangerous for himself. The strongmen leaders of the society made his life a leaving hell. Because of his split personality Sibotosh started to believe he was Ramtanu Lahiri himself. He started to think that the people around him were the stalwarts of Bengali renaissance; David Hare, Radhanath Sikdar, Pyarichand Mitra, Haro Chandra Ghosh and so on. Ramkinkar Baij was not only renowned for his paintings and sculptures, but also for his strong nature of non-confirmance. He understood the meaninglessness of regular married life. He stubbornly continued a very different kind of relationship with his soulmate, withstanding all kinds of pressure from the society. This Ramkinkar regularly comes up in the thoughts of Sibotosh. He often ends up mistaking his wife as Ramkinkar’s soulmate Radharani. And his own son Abhi becomes the artist's nephew Dibakar. Two centuries ago renaissance created a lot of turmoils in the regular Bengali way of life. The education, arts, culture and politics of modern Bengal started to shape up in this time. For many generations, Bengali society has continued on this vain. However on the threshold of Twenty first century, Bengal stared to change rapidly. Globalization induced consumerism and fast life, infiltration of Non-Bengali culture, toxic sub-continental politics - all these rendered the elderly of the Bengali society with no podiums of their own. In this rapidly changing times, they are living like refugees in their own world. This is how Sibotosh moved away from modern life to live in his own dream world with the greats like social reformer Iswar Chandra Vidyasagar, Eleventh century Buddhist educationist Atisa Dipankar, great Bengali ruler Mahipal, visionary king of Tibet Jyang Chup, and many others like them. Because of the slow and steady progress of the incurable disease; he started to forget his own people, loose the feeling of his nerves, and even started to loose his speech. His family gets affected from the burden of his all-consuming illness. In this self-centered society, Sibotosh is not just a Bengali veteran. He is representing the plight of every old men in our ruthless modern world.
Director Bio : Ramkrishna Chanda ,43, is an actor of and play director. Previously he act in a short film 'The Orphan Lute'. Earlier He worked in a documentary in Discovery channel (wild-frank-asia-stagione-1-episodio-3).
Director Bio : 38 years old Biplab Das is a writer, script writer and director. The short film ‘The Orphan Lute’ marked his debut as a director which has been nominated for screening in various film festival in India, Portugal, Colombia and Unite Kingdom. It was awarded as ' Special Mentioned Of The Jury' in 'Festival Cine Animal Bogota 2018', Colombia. In the past he worked with many national and international channels such as Discovery (wild-frank-asia-stagione-1-episodio-3) , National Geography( Acharya Satyananda arrested Documentry), Al-jazeera (A Curse In the Family, Documentry), MTV(Rodies 2005), NDTV India etc to make documentaries and various programmers on various subjects. He is also author of three Bengali books, two of them are on Environment and the rest one is on Cultural Revolution.
Filmography :
