Only the other day, Siladitya Sinha Roy came to my residence and we were discussing the many fascinating personae that were part of the Calcutta milieu that gave it the distinctive character. I mentioned Santi Prasad Choudhury, a documentary film maker and a close friend of my father. He said that he has never heard of him. I showed him a photograph from my family album and he just looked at the image.
Incidentally a few days after that Somak Mukherjee posted an image of Santi Chowdhury decorating the stall of the film Aparajito by Satyajit Ray, in Venice Film Festival.
Santi Prasad Chowdhury was one of the pioneers of documentary film making in India. He has directed more than 50 documentary films, many of them winning awards and has directed several Feature Films among which many won awards, to mention Heerer Prajapati filmed in 1958 to win Best Children's Film.
Over the first three decades of Independent India (1948-1975), documentary film was considered by the new State as the most important medium of mass communication and education. Acknowledging the critical role of documentary images, the Indian State was prompt in creating a national institution, the Films Division (FD) to supervise the production and distribution of documentary films and newsreels. In 1948, one year after India's independence, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru inaugurated Films Division to participate in the project of nation building.
Following the model of the Indian mixed economy, in which public and private sectors collaborated, most of Films Division films were produced internally, whilst the rest was commissioned from private companies which also produced films outside of Films Division. It is their approach to documentary film form and the political situation in India.
While the Films Division’s productions seemed to be undermined by both their approach to documentary film form and the political situation in India, new developments in the practices and aesthetics of documentary films were blooming abroad with the advent of direct sound recording techniques and the “cinema vérité” and “direct cinema” movements. Moreover, “the Indian audience was aware of the new development in the documentary world abroad thanks to international film festivals and the film societies.” This lead to a change and “a new ‘wave’ of documentary filmmakers bloomed in India too, foreheaded by a group of transitional figures such as Fali Bilimoria, Clement Baptista, Santi Chowdhury and Homi Sethna.
The 50s was a time of crisis in the country and distribution of documentary films became a problem. It is at this time that Image India started to distribute films. The company was run by Clement Baptista and Vijaykar, who used to work as cameramen for the British film units during the war. Based in Bombay, they made longer documentaries compared to Films Division. Baptista and Vijaykar never worked for Films Division, but some of their collaborators did. They also had a unit in Calcutta, run by Shanti Chowdhury, who was close to Satyajit Ray. They operated until the rise of television in the mid-1970s.
One of the unknown fact about Santi Prasad is that he was the Assistant Screenplay Writer of Satyajit Ray’s Jalsaghar, The Music Room filmed in 1958.
Santi Prasad was born in 1929. He was educated first at Presidency College, Calcutta then Glasgow University, London. He was actively associated with the British Film Society movement. In the mid-fifties he worked closely with Satyajit Ray, assisting him in writing scripts and representing his films globally. He made many feature, documentary and short films and won awards for them.
He died in February 28, 1982, aged 53.
Image : Santi Prasad Chowdhury. From our Family Album.