The 31st Kolkata International Film Festival organised a talk and a photographic exhibition of Guru Dutt, as part of a tribute to celebrate the hundredth birth anniversary of the iconic Indian filmmaker.
Titled ‘Guru Dutt: The Melancholic Maverick’, the talk on Sunday (November 9, 2025) evening featured eminent film writers and personalities speaking on Guru Dutt’s life and work, including film scholars Shoma A Chatterji, Moinak Biswas, filmmaker Ramesh Sharma, and film journalists Roshmila Bhattacharya and Sathya Saran. The session was being moderated by film journalist Ratnottama Sengupta.
“He was a bold man who experimented, almost like Orson Welles. He experimented with lenses, with lighting. He was sculpting his films through what actual cinema is going to be… He celebrated melancholy. It was part and parcel of [his films], the dichotomy of pain and angst,” award-winning filmmaker Ramesh Sharma said at the seminar in Kolkata’s Sisir Mancha.
Guru Dutt, born Vasanth Kumar Shivashankar Padukone on July 9, 1925, continues to be known as one of India’s pioneering filmmakers, who also often wore the hat of an actor, producer, choreographer, and writer. He spent some of his younger years in Kolkata. Some of his most prominent films are Pyaasa (1957), Kagaz Ke Phool (1959), and Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam (1962).
He added that Dutt was first and foremost a social commentator and that the pain in his films described the ‘hypocrisy’ of the country in its nascent years.
“It was almost an editorial comment by Guru Dutt that unless and until you make a facile, simple commercial film you couldn’t succeed… Guru Dutt was ahead of his time. He was talking about the loss of India’s moral compass. He is as relevant today as he was then. Today we have lost our moral compass. Our filmmakers no longer make films that question society,” Mr. Sharma said.
He also highlighted the role of Urdu poetry in Dutt’s films and the link between the foremost Urdu poets of the country at the time, like Kaifi Azmi and Sahir Ludhianvi, and the auteur’s filmography.
Film scholar Moinak Biswas spoke about the context in which Dutt started working, during the 50s which he described as the moment that heralded a new chapter in India cinema, with new performance styles, new style of cinematography, music, screenwriting etc.
The film historian added that there was an influx of stalwart artists from the Indian People’s Theatre Association and the Progressive Writers Association who Guru Dutt was working closely with at the time, including screenwriters, choreographers, and poets.
“It’s a moment where a new cadre of artists and technicians started working. Because the studio system of the New Theatres, Prabhat, Bombay Talkies was almost replaced by a new production arrangement by the early 50s when Dutt started working, there was scope for innovation and experimentation,” Mr. Biswas said.
Journalist and author of the book ‘Ten Years With Guru Dutt’, Sathya Saran, spoke extensively about Dutt’s turbulent relationship with director and screenwriter Abrar Alvi, who scripted and/or directed several of Dutt’s famous films.
“Here was a friendship that was so deep that Abrar had deep regret over losing that friendship despite Guru Dutt hurting him badly in many ways. In the first few films, Dutt did not give him any credit for screenplays, only for dialogue. He did not give him acting roles even though he sometimes wanted to act… Dutt never gave Abrar the acknowledgement that should have been given to someone of such intense talent,” Ms. Saran alleged.
She added that in the 1962 film Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam, director Abrar had helped Dutt ‘break’ into the role of Atulya Chakraborty ‘Bhootnath’, a villager who had moved to Kolkata in the plot of the film.
“Anybody can tell that two people have [directed] some of the scenes. Pyaasa also had two minds working on it, and two creative minds are better than one,” Ms. Saran added, referring to the duo’s turbulent creative collaborations.
Film scholar Shoma A Chatterji highlighted that the female characters in Guru Dutt’s films portrayed emotional tenacity, strength, and complexity and that both him and his directors emphasised on treating their heroines as human beings.
Journalist Roshmila Bhattacharya spoke about Guru Dutt’s farmhouse in Maharashtra where he would reportedly love to spend leisurely time with nature and farm animals and highlighted the deep melancholy and emotional complexities that Dutt’s close acquaintances would associate him with.
Notably, an exhibition on Guru Dutt and other film personalities with centenary tributes is ongoing at Gaganendra Shilpa Pradarshashala in the Nandan premises as part of the 31st Kolkata International Film Festival.