Hari Sadhan Dasgupta (1923–1996) was arguably the most significant documentary filmmaker to emerge from the circle of film aficionados, intellectuals, and writers who gathered at the Calcutta Film Society (and at the Indian Coffee House on Central Avenue in Calcutta) in the late 1940s and 1950s. He received institutional training in filmmaking at the film school of the University of Southern California and served Irving Pichel as observer apprentice on three films after completing his university program. He was the first among the Calcutta Film Society group to make films and went on to make 50 odd documentaries and commercials between 1948 and 1984, of which Panchthupi: A Village in West Bengal (1955), The Story of Tata Steel (1958), and Konarak (1949) have earned iconic status. He also made two feature-length fiction films Eki Ange Eto Rup (1965) and Kamallata (1969).