''Chokh'' ( lit. The Eyes) is a

1983 The year 1983 saw both the official beginning of the Internet and the first mobile cellular telephone call. Events January * January 1 – The migration of the ARPANET to Internet protocol suite, TCP/IP is officially completed (this is consid ...

Indian Bengali film directed by

Utpalendu Chakrabarty Utpalendu Chakrabarty (born 1948) is a Bengali Indian filmmaker and theater personality, based in Kolkata, India. Life and career He was born in Calcutta in 1948. He graduated from the Scottish Church College, of the University of Calcutta.''S ...

, with

Om Puri Om Prakash Puri (18 October 1950 – 6 January 2017) was an Indian actor who appeared in mainstream commercial Hindi films as well as Bengali, Kannada,English, Punjabi and one Telugu film, as well as independent and art films and also starred ...

Anil Chatterjee Anil Chatterjee (Chattopadhyay) bn, অনিল চ্যাটার্জী (চট্টোপাধ্যায়) (25 October 1929 – 17 March 1996) was an Indian actor in the Bengali cinema during the early fifties through the mid-ni ...

Shyamanand Jalan Shyamanand Jalan (13 January 1934 – 24 May 2010) was a Kolkata-based Indian theatre director, and actor. He is credited for the renaissance period of modern Indian theatre and especially the Hindi theatre in Kolkata from the 1960s to 1980s. H ...

and

Sreela Majumdar Sreela Majumdar (also credited as Srila Mazumdar) is an actress in the Bengali language film industry of India. She has done voice dubbing for Aishwarya Rai in the film '' Chokher Bali'' (2003). Early life She was born to Ramchandra Majumdar a ...

in lead roles. The film is set in 1975 and the oppression and exploitation of

Jute Jute is a long, soft, shiny bast fiber that can be spun into coarse, strong threads. It is produced from flowering plants in the genus ''Corchorus'', which is in the mallow family Malvaceae. The primary source of the fiber is ''Corchorus olit ...

mill workers in

Kolkata Kolkata (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , the official name until 2001) is the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal, on the eastern bank of the Hooghly River west of the border with Bangladesh. It is the primary business, comme ...

. At the

30th National Film Awards The 30th National Film Awards, presented by Directorate of Film Festivals, the organisation set up by Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, India to felicitate the best of Indian Cinema released in the year 1982. Ceremony took place in May ...

he won the awards for

Best Feature Film Best or The Best may refer to: People * Best (surname), people with the surname Best * Best (footballer, born 1968), retired Portuguese footballer Companies and organizations * Best & Co., an 1879–1971 clothing chain * Best Lock Corporatio ...

as well as Best Direction award for the director.

Plot

The film is set during the

Emergency An emergency is an urgent, unexpected, and usually dangerous situation that poses an immediate risk to health, life, property, or environment and requires immediate action. Most emergencies require urgent intervention to prevent a worsening ...

period in December 1975. Jadunath a labour union leader, of Jethia Jute Mill in Kolkata has been given death sentence, for the murders of owner Jethia's brother, and another worker, even though he never committed them. Before dying, he pledges his eyes for donation. However, when the mill owner finds about this, he tries to manoeuvre the medical system to get both the eyes for his blind son. Meanwhile, the doctor discovers that the donation papers provided by the Jethia to be fake. Soon the mill workers get united behind the widow of Jadunath and hold protest rally against the injustice. The film is a document of the time.

Cast

as Jadunath *

as Dr. Mukherjee (as Anil Chattopadhyay) *

as Factory Owner *

as Jadunath's Widow *

Madhabi Mukherjee Madhabi Chakraborty (''née'' Mukherjee; born 10 February 1942) is an Indian actress. She won the National Film Award for Best Actress for her performance in the Bengali film '' Dibratrir Kabya''. She has acted in some of the most critically a ...

(guest appearance) * Ashok Banerjee * Baidyanath Banerjee * Gautam Banerjee * Manju Banerjee * Nepal Banik

References

External links

* {{NationalFilmAwardBestFeatureFilm 1982 films Bengali-language Indian films Films whose director won the Best Director National Film Award Best Feature Film National Film Award winners Films set in 1975 Films set in Kolkata Jute industry of India Social realism in film Films about the labor movement 1980s Bengali-language films