ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how Shakespeare's King Lear has become a productive site for cinematic explorations of 'Bengaliness' in English-language films made both in India and in the United Kingdom for global audiences. It focuses on Aparna Sen's 36 Chowringhee Lane; Jon Sen's two-part television drama made for Channel 4 TV, Second Generation; Rituparno Ghosh's The Last Lear; and Sangeeta Datta's Life Goes On. The chapter examines how these films deploy King Lear to construct a Bengali identity, poised between the West and the East, tradition and modernity, colonial and postcolonial legacies, enlightenment values and popular prejudices. It discusses how the genres of these films and their engagement with the Shakespearean legacy and modernity map the categories of the global, regional, local, national, postcolonial and diasporic. The chapter briefly discusses the recent films on Shakespeare's plays made in and around the quatercentenary of his death in the regional Bangla film industry and their explorations of a changing Bengali identity.
