Ramananda Sengupta – Veteran Bengali Cinematographer

Ramananda Sengupta (1916 – 2017) was a veteran Indian cinematographer from Bengal. Dacca is his hometown. Apart from Bengali films, he also did a few Oriya films. He started his career as an assistant cinematographer in the year 1938 and his career spanned to 4 decades, before he took retirement in 1976. He has also guided many technicians in the field of cinema during his peak years. He did the camera work for more than 70 films, which include Bandhu, Nishithe, Dakghar, Bindur Chhele, Personal Assistant, Nagarik, Shilpi, Kankabatir Ghat etc. He also did a few documentaries. Shrimati Hansaraj was his last filmy work.

Ramananda Sengupta was born in Dhaka, then a part of British India. For some time he studied at Shantiniketan. His studies at Shantiniketan ended abruptly following his father’s death and he returned back. He later came to Kolkata in mid-1930s in search of job and was hired by cinematographer G K Mehta at the Film Corporation studio as an assistant. 1941 film Kurukshetra was his first film in assistant’s role. 1948 movie – “Purbarag” was his first movie as full-fledged cinematographer. French filmmaker Renoir was making a documentary titled ‘The River’ in 1949, and Sengupta became his cinematographer. It proved to be the major turning point of his career, which polished his talents as well. There was no turning back after that.

Ramananda Sengupta – Some interesting and less-known facts

1. When he passed away in 2017, he was the senior most cinematographer of Indian film industry. He was 101 years old and the oldest among all Indian cameramen.

2. Sengupta was the only cinematographer to have worked with all the legends – Jean Renoir, Ritwik Ghatak and Mrinal Sen.

3. Alor Frame e Chhayar Saaj – is a documentary based on his life done by Siddhartha Maity. Maity also published a book after the cinematographer.

4. Utsav Mukherjee made a documentary based on his life in 1997 titled ‘Under Exposed’.

5. He worked with Ritwik Ghatak and Mrinal Sen for their debut full-length films – Nagarik and Raat Bhore respectively.

6. He joined Shantiniketan for studies at the age of 9. He didn’t know Bengali, and knew only Tamil and Telugu then. He spent his early childhood in Chennai, where his father worked in railways as permanent way inspector.

7. He was a founding member of the Technicians’ Studio in South Kolkata’s Tollygunge.