The Changing World of Satyajit Ray: Reflections on Anthropology and History
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Celebrating the Birth Centenary of Shri Satyajit Ray (2Nd May, 1921- 23Rd April, 1992)
Ministry of Information & Broadcasting Celebrating the Birth Centenary of Shri Satyajit Ray (2nd May, 1921- 23rd April, 1992) Year-long celebrations in India and abroad “Satyajit Ray Lifetime Achievement Award for Excellence in Cinema” instituted Posted On: 30 APR 2021 6:41PM by PIB Delhi In homage to the legendary filmmaker, the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting will organise year-long centenary celebrations of late Shri Satyajit Ray across India and abroad. Shri Satyaji Ray was a renowned filmmaker, writer, illustrator, graphic designer, music composer. He started his career in advertising and found inspiration for his first film, Pather Panchali, while illustrating the children’s version of the novel by Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay. The film catapulted him into international fame. Shri Ray went on to make other great films such as Charulata, Agantuk and Nayak. He was also a prolific writer, making the famous sleuth Feluda and scientist Professor Shonku, a popular part of Bengali Literature. The Government of India honoured him with the Bharat Ratna, the highest civilian award, in 1992. As part of the celebrations, the Media Units of Ministry of Information & Broadcasting viz. Directorate of Film Festivals, Films Division, NFDC, NFAI, and Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute (SRFTI), Kolkata are planning a series of activities. Other Ministries/Departments including Ministry of External Affairs and Ministry of Culture will also be playing an active part. However, in view of the pandemic situation, the celebrations will be held in hybrid mode, digital and physical both, during the year. In recognition of the auteur’s legacy, “Satyajit Ray Lifetime Achievement Award for Excellence in Cinema” has been instituted from this year to be given at the International Film Festival of India (IFFI) every year starting from this year. -
Film & History: an Interdisciplinary Journal of Film and Television Studies
Film & History: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Film and Television Studies Volume 38, Issue 2, 2008, pp. 107-109 http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/film_and_history/toc/flm.38.2.html Gaston Roberge, Satyajit Ray: Essays 1970-2005, Manohar, New Delhi (India), 2007, 280 pp., hb , ISBN: 81-7304-735-9 Reviewed by Gëzim Alpion In its scope and depth, Gaston Roberge’s new book on Satyajit Ray, is one of the most important publications to appear on this great twentieth-century film director since his 1992 death. The book includes twenty-four essays, which were written between 1970 and 2005. The timeline is important to trace the growth and maturity of Ray’s art as well as Roberge’s admiration for and appreciation of his oeuvre. The essays were originally prompted by teaching assignments and requests for articles as well as by Roberge’s long-standing and growing interest in the work and talent of the Calcutta-born filmmaker. Only Essay 8, the discussion of Jana Aranya (The Middle Man, 1975), was written for this collection to ‘complement’ the book and ‘improve’ Roberge’s ‘perception of the evolution’ (p. 14) he seeks to describe from the Apu trilogy to the Heart trilogy. Some of the essays have been edited slightly by the author to avoid repetition and, more importantly, to reflect important changes in technology since the time the articles were first published. So, for instance, in Essay 13, which appeared in print initially in 1974, Roberge rightly argues that the editing was warranted by the fact that, in the digital era, the technology of film can no longer be defined solely as the succession of still images. -
POWERFUL and POWERLESS: POWER RELATIONS in SATYAJIT RAY's FILMS by DEB BANERJEE Submitted to the Graduate Degree Program in Fi
POWERFUL AND POWERLESS: POWER RELATIONS IN SATYAJIT RAY’S FILMS BY DEB BANERJEE Submitted to the graduate degree program in Film and Media Studies and the Graduate Faculty of the University of Kansas in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master’s of Arts ____________________ Chairperson Committee members* ____________________* ____________________* ____________________* ____________________* Date defended: ______________ The Thesis Committee of Deb Banerjee certifies that this is the approved version of the following thesis: POWERFUL AND POWERLESS: POWER RELATIONS IN SATYAJIT RAY’S FILMS Committee: ________________________________ Chairperson* _______________________________ _______________________________ _______________________________ _______________________________ Date approved:_______________________ ii CONTENTS Abstract…………………………………………………………………………….. 1 Introduction……………………………………………………………………….... 2 Chapter 1: Political Scenario of India and Bengal at the Time Periods of the Two Films’ Production……………………………………………………………………16 Chapter 2: Power of the Ruler/King……………………………………………….. 23 Chapter 3: Power of Class/Caste/Religion………………………………………… 31 Chapter 4: Power of Gender……………………………………………………….. 38 Chapter 5: Power of Knowledge and Technology…………………………………. 45 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………. 52 Work Cited………………………………………………………………………... 55 i Abstract Scholars have discussed Indian film director, Satyajit Ray’s films in a myriad of ways. However, there is paucity of literature that examines Ray’s two films, Goopy -
Satyajit Ray at 100: Why Sharmila Tagore Considers 'Devi' Her Best
TALKING FILMS Satyajit Ray at 100: Why Sharmila Tagore considers ‘Devi’ her best collaboration with the master The 1960 classic, an examination of the tussle between blind faith and rationality, was one of five Ray productions to feature Tagore. Sharmila Tagore Jan 27, 2021 · 03:30 pm Sharmila Tagore in Satyajit Ray’s Devi (1960) | Satyajit Ray Productions Satyajit Ray arrived on the planet nearly a hundred years ago in 1921 and in the world of cinema with Pather Panchali in 1955. Devi, released in 1960, was his sixth feature, and followed the Apu Trilogy, Parash Pathar and Jalsaghar. Apur Sansar, the concluding chapter of the trilogy, introduced Soumitra Chatterjee and Sharmila Tagore. Both actors would become an indelible part of Ray’s cinematic universe. The haunting Devi, set in nineteenth-century Bengal and at the intersection of blind faith and rationality, was Tagore’s first lead role. She plays Doyamayee, a member of an aristocratic family who is declared to be the living embodiment of the goddess Kali by her father- in-law Kalikinkar (Chhabi Biswas). The gentle and tradition-bound Doyamayee is unable to resist the cult that builds up around her. Her husband Umaprasad (Soumitra Chatterjee) is equally unable to persuade his father that his wife is all too human. Adapted by Ray from a short story by Prabhat Kumar Mukherjee and beautifully shot by Subrata Mitra and designed by Bansi Chadragupta, Devi provides an early peek into Tagore’s estimable acting abilities. Then only 14 years old, Tagore delivered what she describes in the following essay as her “favourite performance”. -
An Appraisal
Adnan Tariq * Muhammad Iqbal Chawla ** FROM COMMUNITARIANISM TO COMMUNALISM, COMMUNITARIAN IDENTITY IN LATE NINETEENTH CENTURY LAHORE: AN APPRAISAL This paper attempts to understand the communitarian sense of awakening in the city of Lahore, which surfaced in the nineteenth century. This communal tangle further transformed into communal bigotry. By the end of the nineteenth century, Lahore had started witnessing the burgeoning communal antagonisms in its colonial inspired cosmopolitanism. Though Muslims were in significant majority, they were deprived in many of the important civic affairs. On the contrary, Hindus were far less in number but having par excellence in many of the socio-economic realm, had upper hand in the civic affairs. Sikhs were the least in numbers in the three-main communities in the colonial Lahore. Every community had grabbed the colonial opportunities according to their socio-economic status; that status-according grabbing resulted into disequilibrium among the communities. At the same time, all the three-main communities had tried to draw their communitarian identity according to the colonial challenges posed by missionaries, interacting and amplifying by the subsequent tussles even among themselves. In that foreground, the retrospective genesis of religious antagonism was transformed into the communitarian and subsequent communal antagonism in the city of Lahore with all of its own peculiarities. Assassination of Lala Lekh Ram testifies that Lahore had entered into the communal antagonism, which sealed the future course up to the coming of partition. Thus, it is indeed important to study the maneuverings of all the three major communities in the city of Lahore while making their identical schemes. -
In Search of a Global Theosophical India in Tarakishore Choudhury's
Bharatbhoomi Punyabhoomi: In Search of a Global Theosophical India in Tarakishore Choudhury’s Writings Author: Arkamitra Ghatak Stable URL: http://www.globalhistories.com/index.php/GHSJ/article/view/105 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17169/GHSJ.2017.105 Source: Global Histories, Vol. 3, No. 1 (Apr. 2017), pp. 39–61 ISSN: 2366-780X Copyright © 2017 Arkamitra Ghatak License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Publisher information: ‘Global Histories: A Student Journal’ is an open-access bi-annual journal founded in 2015 by students of the M.A. program Global History at Freie Universität Berlin and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. ‘Global Histories’ is published by an editorial board of Global History students in association with the Freie Universität Berlin. Freie Universität Berlin Global Histories: A Student Journal Friedrich-Meinecke-Institut Koserstraße 20 14195 Berlin Contact information: For more information, please consult our website www.globalhistories.com or contact the editor at: [email protected]. Bharatbhoomi Punyabhoomi: In Search of a Global Theosophical India in Tarakishore Choudhury’s Writings ARKAMITRA GHATAK Arkamitra Ghatak completed her major in History at Presidency University, Kolkata, in 2016, securing the first rank in the order of merit and was awarded the Gold Medal for Academic Ex- cellence. She is currently pursuing a Master in History at Presidency University. Her research interests include intellectual history in its plural spatialities, expressions of feminine subjec- tivities and spiritualities, as well as articulations of power and piety in cultural performances, especially folk festivals. She has presented several research papers at international student seminars organized at Presidency University, Jadavpur University and other organizations. -
The Humanism of Satyajit Ray, His Last Will and Testament Shantanu Ray Chaudhuri
AGANTUK – The Humanism of Satyajit Ray, His Last Will And Testament Shantanu Ray Chaudhuri It’s impossible to record the transition in the socio-political and cultural landscape of India in general and Bengal in particular without taking into account the contribution of Satyajit Ray. As author Peter Rainer says, ‘In Ray’s films the old and the new are inextricably joined. This is the great theme of all his movies: the way the past in India forever bleeds through the present.’ Today, Indian cinema, particularly Bollywood, has found a global market. But it may be useful to remember that if anyone can be credited with putting Indian cinema on the world map, it is Satyajit Ray. He pioneered a whole new sensibility about films and filmmaking that compelled the world to reshape its perception of Indian cinema. ‘What we need,’ he wrote in 1947, before he ever directed a film, ‘is a style, an idiom, a part of the iconography of cinema which would be uniquely and recognizably Indian.’ This Still from the documentary, The Music of Satyajit Ray he achieved, and yet, like all great artists, his films went Watch film here- https://bit.ly/3u8orOD beyond the frontiers of countries and cultures. His contribution to the cultural scene in India is limited not just to his work as a director. He was the Renaissance man of independent India. As a film-maker he handled almost all the departments on his own – he wrote the screenplay and dialogues for his film, he composed his own music, designed the promotional material for his films, designed his own posters, went on to handle the cinematography and editing, was actively involved in the costumes (literally sketching each and every costume in a film). -
Remembering Ray | Kanika Aurora
Remembering Ray | Kanika Aurora Rabindranath Tagore wrote a poem in the autograph book of young Satyajit whom he met in idyllic Shantiniketan. The poem, translated in English, reads: ‘Too long I’ve wandered from place to place/Seen mountains and seas at vast expense/Why haven’t I stepped two yards from my house/Opened my eyes and gazed very close/At a glistening drop of dew on a piece of paddy grain?’ Years later, Satyajit Ray the celebrated Renaissance Man, captured this beauty, which is just two steps away from our homes but which we fail to appreciate on our own in many of his masterpieces stunning the audience with his gritty, neo realistic films in which he wore several hats- writing all his screenplays with finely detailed sketches of shot sequences and experimenting in lighting, music, editing and incorporating unusual camera angles. Several of his films were based on his own stories and his appreciation of classical music is fairly apparent in his music compositions resulting in some rather distinctive signature Ray tunes collaborating with renowned classical musicians such as Ravi Shankar, Ali Akbar and Vilayat Khan. No surprises there. Born a hundred years ago in 1921 in an extraordinarily talented Bengali Brahmo family, Satyajit Ray carried forward his illustrious legacy with astonishing ease and finesse. Both his grandfather Upendra Kishore RayChaudhuri and his father Sukumar RayChaudhuri are extremely well known children’s writers. It is said that there is hardly any Bengali child who has not grown up listening to or reading Upendra Kishore’s stories about the feisty little bird Tuntuni or the musicians Goopy Gyne and Bagha Byne. -
Portrayal of Environment in Cinema: a Comparative Study of 'Pather Panchali'
International Journal of Humanities and Social Science Research International Journal of Humanities and Social Science Research ISSN: 2455-2070; Impact Factor: RJIF 5.22 www.socialsciencejournal.in Volume 3; Issue 5; May 2017; Page No. 45-48 Portrayal of environment in cinema: A comparative study of ‘Pather panchali’ & ‘Dreams’ Ram Prakash Dwivedi Department of Hindi journalism & Mass Communication, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar College, University of Delhi, New Delhi, India Abstract Satyajit Ray (1921-1992) and Akira Kurosawa (1910-198) are the world-famous filmmakers. Coincidentally, they were contemporary and friends. They were also sources of inspiration for each other. Their films are a landmark example of creative cine-language. In most of their movies, nature and the environment are as important as the human characters. Rather, the human being is guided by the nature to act upon. Their movies incorporate nature as an essential component for human activities. Portrayal of nature, in Ray’s movies, is different from that of Kurosawa. To Ray’s films environment and nature comes as part of daily life or seasonal change, whereas Kurosawa represents nature as phenomena like rain, volcanic eruptions, tsunami and earthquakes. This difference is the result of separate geographical conditions of India and Japan. Japan is environmentally very sensitive country, whereas India, due to its larger landmass, does not feel such sensitivity. Pather Panchali (1955) is considered as a masterpiece of parallel cinema and reflects reality. The film was made with on location shooting technique. This film, therefore, depicts the nature and environment of Bengal. In Dreams (1990) imagination is more important than reality. -
Artist Recreates Satyajit Ray S Film Posters on 100Th Birth Anniversary
Artist recreates Satyajit Ray's film posters on 100th birth anniversary to depict Covid crisis An artist marked 100 years of legendary filmmaker Satyajit Ray by recreating his iconic film posters to depict the Covid-19 crisis in India. Krishna Priya Pallavi Writer [email protected] If I am not writing on fashion, places you can travel to for that perfect holiday, mental health, trending topics, I am probably escaping the city for a vacation, eating a scrumptious meal at a quaint cafe, and so much more in between. Love to travel (obviously), dance, explore new places, read extensively and try out new and exciting dishes. Works as Senior Sub-Editor at India Today Digital. Aniket Mitra used posters from Satyajit Ray's iconic films to depict the Covid-19 crisis going on in India Photo: Facebook/Aniket Mitra Satyajit Ray had an inedible mark on the Indian cinema. His films are admired by cinephiles all over the world. May 2 marks 100 years since Satyajit Ray was born, and to celebrate his 100th birth anniversary, an artist paid the legendary filmmaker a poignant and relevant tribute. A Mumbai-based artist named Aniket Mitra celebrated the historic day by reimagining Satyajit Ray's iconic film posters amid the Covid times. ARTIST RECREATES SATYAJIT RAY'S FILM POSTERS TO DEPICT COVID CRISIS Aniket Mitra used ten films by Satyajit Ray to depict the Covid-19 crisis going on in India. Posters of films like Pather Panchali, Devi, Nayak, Seemabaddha, Jana Aranya, Mahanagar, Ashani Sanket and more, were used to show the citizens' struggle during the second wave of the deadly virus. -
Rabindranath's Nationalist Thought
5DELQGUDQDWK¶V1Dtionalist T hought: A Retrospect* Narasingha P. Sil** Abstract : 7DJRUH¶VDQWL-absolutist and anti-statist stand is predicated primarily on his vision of global peace and concord²a world of different peoples and cultures united by amity and humanity. While this grand vision of a brave new world is laudable, it is, nevertheless, constructed on misunderstanding and misreading of history and of the role of the nation state in the West since its rise sometime during the late medieval and early modern times. Tagore views state as an artificial mechanism, indeed a machine thDWWKULYHVRQFRHUFLRQFRQIOLFWDQGWHUURUE\VXEYHUWLQJSHRSOH¶VIUHHGRPDQG culture. This paper seeks to argue that the state also played historically a significant role in enhancing and enriching culture and civilization. His view of an ideal human society is sublime, but by the same token, somewhat ahistorical and anti-modern., K eywords: Anarchism, Babu, Bengal Renaissance, deshaprem [patriotism], bishwajiban [universal life], Gessellschaft, Gemeinschaft, jatiyatabad [nationalism], rastra [state], romantic, samaj [society], swadeshi [indigenous] * $QHDUOLHUVKRUWHUYHUVLRQRIWKLVSDSHUWLWOHG³1DWLRQDOLVP¶V8JO\)DFH7DJRUH¶V7DNH5HYLVLWHG´ZDVSUHVHQWHGWR the Social Science Seminar, Western Oregon University on January 27, 2010 and I thank its convener Professor Eliot Dickinson of the Department of Political Science and Public Administration for inviting me. All citations in Bengali appear in my translation unless stated otherwise. BE stands for Bengali Era that follows the -
Pather Panchali
February 19, 2002 (V:5) Conversations about great films with Diane Christian and Bruce Jackson SATYAJIT RAY (2 May 1921,Calcutta, West Bengal, India—23 April 1992, Calcutta) is one of the half-dozen universally P ATHER P ANCHALI acknowledged masters of world cinema. Perhaps the best starting place for information on him is the excellent UC Santa Cruz (1955, 115 min., 122 within web site, the “Satjiyat Ray Film and Study Collection” http://arts.ucsc.edu/rayFASC/. It's got lists of books by and about Ray, a Bengal) filmography, and much more, including an excellent biographical essay by Dilip Bausu ( Also Known As: The Lament of the http://arts.ucsc.edu/rayFASC/detail.html) from which the following notes are drawn: Path\The Saga of the Road\Song of the Road. Language: Bengali Ray was born in 1921 to a distinguished family of artists, litterateurs, musicians, scientists and physicians. His grand-father Upendrakishore was an innovator, a writer of children's story books, popular to this day, an illustrator and a musician. His Directed by Satyajit Ray father, Sukumar, trained as a printing technologist in England, was also Bengal's most beloved nonsense-rhyme writer, Written by Bibhutibhushan illustrator and cartoonist. He died young when Satyajit was two and a half years old. Bandyopadhyay (also novel) and ...As a youngster, Ray developed two very significant interests. The first was music, especially Western Classical music. Satyajit Ray He listened, hummed and whistled. He then learned to read music, began to collect albums, and started to attend concerts Original music by Ravi Shankar whenever he could.