Cinematic conventions tend to be embedded in the patriarchal. The controlling look is always male, with women subjected to the gaze - voyeuristic, investigative, looking for titillation. Yet, Satyajit Ray’s cinema strove to steer clear of this. None of Ray’s women protagonists - most memorably in his adaptations of Tagore’s stories but true of other films too - can be reduced to a cliché. They defy every imaginable stereotyping.\n\nWoman at the Window attempts a completely new way of looking at Ray’s films in general, and his adaptations of Tagore in particular, through an examination of objects that are the familiars of his female protagonists. A lorgnette in Charulata, a box of jewels in Monihara, a bag of gold coins in Ghare Baire, a squirrel in Samapti, and in the non-Tagore stories, a stick of lipstick in Mahanagar, a hairpin on a rumpled pillow in Apur Sansar. What do these everyday objects subtly suggest about the characteristics of their owners and users? What role do they play in the lives of the characters? Do they offer a new dimension or perspective in the study of Ray’s cinema? \n\nAward-winning author Shoma Chatterji offers an entirely new understanding of the differences and synergy between Tagore’s original stories and Ray’s celluloid readings of them, as also fascinating material for anyone interested in cinema or gender. \n
About the Author
Shoma A. Chatterji, film critic, journalist and author, won the National Award (1991) for Best Film Critic and the Best Film Critic Award from the Bengal Film Journalists’ Association (1998). Her book Parama and Other Outsiders: The Cinema of Aparna Sen won the National Award for the Best Book on Cinema in 2003. She won a research fellowship from the National Film Archive, Pune, in 2003-2004, and a senior research fellowship from PSBT (Public Service Broadcasting Trust), Delhi. She won the second prize in the Sahitya Akademi’s Golden Short Story Translation Contest in 2007. She writes extensively on cinema and gender issues. She also covers media, human rights, development, child rights and contemporary issues in several print and electronic media publications across India. She has been on the panel of film juries at international film festivals and has presented papers on television and cinema at Thessaloniki, Greece, Mannheim, Stuttgart and University of Heidelberg, Germany, School of Sound, London, and Asian Film Centre, Colombo, Sri Lanka. Besides contributing to many edited compilations on Indian cinema, she has authored over twenty published titles on cinema, gender issues, short fiction and urban history. She currently contributes to The Statesman, The Tribune, www.upperstall.com, www.IndiaTogether.org, One India One People, Vidura, Media, Trans World Features and Free Press Journal. She has been writing for thirty-five years and is based in Kolkata.
