In Search of a Revolutionary Modernism: The Art and Activism of Ritwik Kumar Ghatak

Sudhindranath Datta, one of the post-Tagore modernist thinkers and poets of his time, penned his experience of watching a movie in his 1928 poem called ‘At a Cinema’ with these words:

Upon the white backdrop
Passes the imitation of life
In two dimensions,
The futile shadow of the shadow,
the memory of a fleeting moment,
Mimics reality …
Classical harmony and truth are driven into far-off exile
from those world-changing images. A string of flippant whims
Roam screaming unfettered in the chaotic field
In plebian vaunt.