Beyond the novel: Kanchenjungha at the crossroads – Parichay Patra (Jodhpur)
“This film could not have been a novel…”: this is how Satyajit Ray spoke about KANCHENJUNGHA from 1962, which tells a family story from a summer retreat in Darjeeling and was only lukewarmly received in India and beyond. In light of the colonial legacy and the complex modernity of the Indian novel, the strangely reserved reception that the film received can be attributed to its rejection of the novelistic and its borrowings from the transnational cinema of the 1960s.
Parichay Patra teaches at the School of Liberal Arts and Indian Institute of Technology in Jodhpur, India.
Film: KANCHENJUNGHA , India 1962, 97 min.