@ A

Have you put "Aparajito" above "Pather Panchali" in terms of rating? If you have, i agree 

'Monsoon Wedding" is not only bad cinema, it is an unacknowledged lift from a great film very close to my heart - Vinterberg's "Festen" - the incest plot, the servant quarters subplot, the hand-held camera et al. Probably it is so unrecognisable because of the mess she makes of it! I have no problems with lifts (bollywood is always doing that), but one wonders what she was trying to make of it!

a bit of useful info for Ghatak fans. i work for a grantmaking organisation in the arts, and we've just made a grant to the Ghatak Memorial Trust for the restoration of the negative and making of fresh positives of Ghatak's first film, "The Citizen" and seven of his short films. Hopefully, those films will travel. Interestingly, "The Citizen" would have pioneered alternative Indian cinema (1952-53), had it not run into release problems. Instead, "Pather Panchali" became the first film of its kind, and "The Citizen" had a posthumous release in 1977!

M