Amita Malik : the grand old lady of Indian Media journalism
iView Author: Biswa Prasun Chatterji (Mumbai, India)
Email: biswaprasun [at]gmail[dot]com
Content : Amita Malik : the grand old lady of Indian Media journalism
‘The grand old lady of Indian film & media journalism’, Amita Malik passed away in February, 2009. She was truly the first of her kind in India.
Even, I remember Mr.Prannoy Roy decorating her with this epithet when she was invited to comment on future of Indian media journalism in a memorable
programme on NDTV three years back. From my Kolkata days, I remember her wonderful film criticism in the revered newspaper, The Statesman. Long
before Namrata Joshi, Khalid Mohammed, Anil Grover, Nikhat Kazmi came in the picture, Amita was the one who wrote about movies prolifically.
I remember a flowing and flawless article by her on filmmaker Goutam Ghosh’s documentary The Silk Route in The Statesman. Her opinion mattered for Indian filmmakers. Bijoya Ray, widow of the great Satyajit Ray reminisces fondly in her autobiography ‘Amader Kotha’ about the TV interview of Ray and Marlon Brando during infancy of Doordarshan in the early seventies.
She commanded much respect from filmmakers, as evident from my interaction with Harisadhan Dasgupta, the first documentary filmmaker of India.
Panchthupi, a documentary by Harisadhan for Burmah Shell was shot in a village in Murshidabad district of Bengal where he likened the homecoming of a rural married lady with the events of Durga Puja, a very Bengali tradition. Seeing Panchthupi, Amita Malik, was ecstatic and went on to praise to the extent of comparing it to Pather Panchali in The Statesman.
I found Harisadhan glowing whenever he used to refer to Panchthupi’s review by Amita Malik. With her demise, a generation and genre is gone.
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
@Biswa,
By any chance, do you have the articles of Amita Malik on The Silk Route and Panchthupi?
RK : No I do not have the statesman articles with me. I remember somewhere around 1995 Ms.Malik wrote on the silk route. It was shown in Max Mueller Bhavan & Nandan, Kolkata.
And regarding Panchthupi…..I heard about the article from Late Mr.Harisadhan Dasgupta himself. I came to know Harisadhan closely in 1993. He died in 1996.Panchthupi was made in 1955 by him. It was commissioned by Burmah Shell. Hrishikesh Mukherji was editor, Salil Chaudhuri – the music director. I got this info from a biography on Harisadhan in Bangla.
@Biswa,
Thanks for the detailed info.
There is so much focus on chaaloo films that it should not be a common thing even for serious media journalists and film critics to cover documentaries.
Whenever you go to Kolkata, may try to search the articles in the archives of The Statesman
I got to know of Mrs. Amita Malik, for the first time when I read and article by her, on the death of Marlon Brando, in HT.
I remember keeping the article in my file, but have failed to locate it. It was an excellent account of her meeting Brando, when he visited India on a rare visit to discuss making Banku Babur Bandhu with Satyajit Ray(which was never made. On that visit of his, Mrs. Malik perhaps, had an opportunity as a host on AIR to interview Mr. Brando. She wrote in the article how he had wooed her with his “Voodoo” voice, and later added that those tapes were lost from the AIR office.But, the point is that, the short article was evocative and very melancholic. Perhaps one of the best obit I have read.
Its sad in India we keep losing things.haha..I just hope someone helps me out in locating the article and I am sure I will find it someday.But, what about the tapes, will they ever be retrieved