George Kutty AL passed away on April 20, 2026, at the age of 75. As secretary of the Bangalore Film Society (BFS), editor of the film quarterly Deep Focus, and founder-coordinator of Voices from the Waters, an international travelling film festival [1], Kutty was, over four decades, one of the most quietly consequential figures in India’s film society movement and film criticism.
My own friendship with Kutty began in the mid-1980s, when MK Raghavendra, the late MU Jayadev, and I would meet him at BFS and Max Mueller Bhavan screenings. Kutty worked with SIEDS (Society for Informal Education and Development Studies) in Bangalore, an NGO for which cinema was not peripheral but central; BFS was one of its principal activities. He was naturally open to film enthusiasts, and a friendship formed easily. The three of us began collaborating with him on retrospectives. One significant effort was the Andrei Tarkovsky retrospective in December 1986, held in the magnificent Chowdaiah Memorial Hall to a packed audience. Financing such an event was no small matter, but Kutty threw himself into it by approaching companies, soliciting advertisements, and marshalling resources through sheer energy and conviction.
By late 1987, he mentioned his aspiration to start a film journal. We were immediately enthusiastic: such a platform was sorely needed. Our first planning meeting took place at the open-air restaurant of the erstwhile Hotel Shyamprakash on Infantry Road, Bangalore. It was Raghavendra who proposed the title, Deep Focus, a term drawn from cinema’s own lexicon, at once precise and evocative. The inaugural issue appeared in December 1987, with George Kutty AL as editor and Raghavendra, Jayadev, and me as co-founders [2]. The cover carried a still from Adoor Gopalakrishnan’s Anantaram(1987). The issue opened with Raghavendra’s essay, “Urbanization and Rootlessness: Adoor’s Drifters in Perspective” followed by my own piece, “Filmmaker as Prophet: The Cinema of Andrei Tarkovsky”. Madhu Bhushan offered “Images of Women: A Subversive Strength” and Ashish Nandy’s “An Intelligent Critic’s Guide to Indian Cinema, Part I” anchored the seminar section. Jayadev and I published a long, in-depth interview with Girish Kasaravalli. What distinguished the journal from the outset was Kutty’s insistence that it be as visually sophisticated as it was intellectually rigorous. This sensibility was realised by Lloyd Robert and Gerard Sequeira who handled the design and layout, giving the journal a distinctive identity.
During IFFI ’92 in Bangalore, Deep Focus produced two supplements: Festival Focus, which previewed the festival, and Festival Flash, which reviewed films as they screened. Over the years Deep Focus became a vital platform for a generation of Indian film critics and cineastes, among them FTII alumnus Shrikant Prabhu. Yet Kutty battled a chronic shortage of funds throughout. The journal rarely managed four issues a year, often only three or two, and by 2008 it ceased publication altogether. A relaunch in 2012 as Deep Focus Cinema followed, but that too eventually closed. The loss was not merely sentimental: it marked a further contraction of serious critical space for cinema in the country.
At one point, Filmbuff editor Rwita Dutta kindly spoke to me at length about the possibility of reviving Deep Focus and offered her support. When I conveyed this to Kutty, he spoke candidly about the prohibitive costs of printing. Though an online transition might have been feasible, Kutty remained committed to print as the medium of record; for him, it was print or nothing.
But Kutty himself never stopped. He served for several years as a Regional Council member of the Federation of Film Societies of India. More remarkably, in 2005 he founded Voices from the Waters, an international travelling film festival focused on water – bringing together activists, environmentalists, scientists, policy-makers, and artists to engage through cinema with the world’s deepening water crisis. [1] Over two decades, the festival built a genuine international presence, consistently drawing films from across the world. That Kutty conceived and sustained it, by connecting ecological urgency with the film society tradition, says much about the range of his commitments.
The tributes that followed his death spoke to what those who knew him found most distinctive about him. Raghavendra, quoted in The Hindu, rightly described Kutty as “fiercely radical minded,” noting his preference for Marxist documentaries over European classics [3]. In fact, from 2022 onwards, the Bangalore Film Society almost entirely stopped screening fiction films to focus on documentaries. N. Vidyashankar, former artistic director of BIFFES, put it precisely as quoted in Deccan Herald: “Kutty’s vision was always rooted in the necessity of cinema as a cultural tool. He conducted special festivals with a focus on progressive ideas, ensuring that Bengaluru remained a sanctuary for serious cinephiles.” [4] Babu Eshwar Prasad, artist and filmmaker, wrote somewhat on similar lines on Facebook adding his own tribute to Kutty: “Even when he was ill, his resolve never flickered. He continued to pull festivals together, often through sheer willpower, because he believed we needed these stories. He worked not for credit or sentiment, but out of a deep-rooted necessity to keep the culture of film alive.” [5]
Kutty had been unwell for the past two years, his condition worsening in recent months. At his farewell at SIEDS on April 22, 2026, the gathering was large: fellow activists, SIEDS associates, film society organisers, critics and many others. It was a testament to Kutty’s gift for bringing people together around a shared commitment to his ideals. His passing is a loss of a particular and irreplaceable kind: the loss of someone who understood film culture not as a career or a hobby but as a cultural necessity, and who gave the better part of his life to keeping that vision alive, at a time when the institutions that sustain serious cinema are themselves under pressure to disappear.
References
1. SIEDS, 2026, Cinema, https://siedsindia.org/cinema/
2. M. K. Raghavendra, March 2023, M. K. Raghavendra, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._K._Raghavendra
3. Vivek M.V., April 23, 2026, George Kutty, a beloved figure in Bengaluru’s film society movement, no more,https://www.thehindu.com/entertainment/movies/george-kutty-no-more-bangalore-film-society-movement-deep-focus-magazine-film-screenings-bengaluru/article70888188.ece
4. DHNS, April 21, 2026, Veteran film activist George Kutty passes away in Bengaluru, https://www.deccanherald.com/india/karnataka/bengaluru/veteran-film-activist-george-kutty-passes-away-in-bengaluru-3976110?utm_source=whatsapp&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=socialshare
5. Babu Eshwar Prasad, April 20, 2026, It is a very sad day for the film community and for me personally. We’ve lost George Kutty, the man, https://www.facebook.com/babu.e.prasad