‘When I Smelt Much Less Madness in the Air’: Mrinal Sen and Marginal Political Cinema in the Global South

In his autobiographical writings and memoirs, Mrinal Sen recounts his encounters with several radical filmmakers from Latin America, including relatively lesser-known ones such as Carlos Álvarez (Colombia) and Raymundo Gleyzer (Argentina). Despite Sen’s conscious ideological investment in the possible formation of a South–South solidarity network and his interest in making his Indian readership aware of such non-canonical political cinema, his writings reveal a visible gap in communication, often because of the limited translation and non-availability of source texts from Latin America. Exploring a number of archives in India, the United States and Argentina, this article traces such discrepancies and ambiguities, along with their transnational aesthetic associations.