Satyajit Ray

Satyajit Ray, one of the greatest auteurs of twentieth century cinema, was a Bengali motion-picture director, writer, and illustrator who set a new standard for Indian cinema with his Apu Trilogy: Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road) (1955), Aparajito (The Unvanquished) (1956), and Apur Sansar (The World of Apu) (1959). His work was admired for its humanism, versatility, attention to detail, and skilled use of music. He was also widely praised for his critical and intellectual writings, which mirror his filmmaking in their precision and wide-ranging grasp of history, culture, and aesthetics. Spanning forty years of Ray's career, these essays, for the first time collected in one volume, present the filmmaker's reflections on the art and craft of the cinematic medium and include his thoughts on sentimentalism, mass culture, silent films, the influence of the French New Wave, and the experience of being a successful director. Ray speaks on the difficulty of adapting literary works to screen, the nature of the modern film festival, and the phenomenal contributions of Jean-Luc Godard and the Indian actor, director, producer, and singer Uttam Kumar. The collection also features an excerpt from Ray's diaries and reproduces his sketches of famous film personalities, such as Sergei Eisenstein, Charlie Chaplin, and Akira Kurosawa, in addition to film posters, photographs by and of the artist, film stills, and a filmography. Altogether, the volume relays the full extent of Ray's engagement with film and offers extensive access to the thought of one of the twentieth-century's leading Indian intellectuals.

The absorbing story of how one of the greatest directors of our time began his film-making career 'Ray's fascinating account of how he made the (Apu) trilogy and how his passion for cinema was first kindled.' -India Today 'Written in an impeccable style it brings back memories of an era when film-making was an art born out of a love for the medium and not merely a means to make money. -Sunday Mail 'My Years With Apu prompts wistful thoughts of those other books, the other Ray masterpieces that remained unwritten at the time of the director's death.' -Indian Review of Books 'A swift, detailed, precise narrative...the story and its many links still retain, as a powerful myth of artistic genesis, their freshness, and may have acquired a new significance with the passing of time.' -The Telegraph

Profiles the life of the Indian director, and discusses the making of each of his films

This book brings together Satyajit Ray s major writings and talks on film makers, and presents them in two sections. Our Films is devoted mainly to his own experiences and contains many interesting anecdotes, but also has observations to offer on trends in Indian films. Their Films deals with some films abroad that have become landmarks in the history of cinema from the silent era to the present day and offers glimpses of great directors like Renoir, John Ford, Kurosawa and Charlie Chaplin, who are Ray s personal favourites.

Interviews with India's preeminent film director and creator of the Apu trilogy

The Definitive Study Of The Life And Work Of India S Greatest Filmmaker Satyajit Ray Was India S First Filmmaker To Gain International Recognition As A Master Of The Medium, And Today He Continues To Be Regarded As One Of The World S Finest Directors Of All Time. His First Film Pather Panchali, Made When He Was In His Thirties, Catapulted Him Into The Forefront Of Young Directors Worldwide When In 1956 The Cannes Film Festival Honoured It As The Best Human Document Of The Year. Several Other Films By Ray, Like Aparajito, Jalsaghar, Charulata, Nayak, Aranyer Din Ratri, Shatranj Ke Khilari, Ghare Baire And Agantuk, Made Over A Career Spanning Five Decades, Are Considered Classics Of Contemporary Cinema. In 1992, Ray Was Awarded The Oscar For Lifetime Achievement By The Academy Of Motion Pictures Arts And Science And, In The Same Year, Was Also Honoured With The Bharat Ratna. First Compared With Robert Flaherty For His Lyrical Use Of Nature And Locations, Ray Is Now Regarded As One Of The Great Neo-Realist Directors. From The Beginning He Rejected The Established Path Of Indian Film Production, Declaring At The Age Of Six: I Ll Go To Germany And Come Back And Make Films. He Absorbed A Remarkably Broad Culture From His Family Which Had Interesting Literary, Artistic And Musical Inclinations. With His Extraordinary Persistence And Capacity For Work, He Simultaneously Equipped Himself With Such Thoroughness That He Was Able To Create A Masterpiece In His Very First Film. Marie Seton S Classic Study Of Ray, The Product Of Thorough Research And A Long And Close Association With The Ray Family, Is The Most Detailed Examination Available Of Ray S Work As Musician, Scenarist And Director. First Published In 1971, It Was Last Updated In 1978, Some Fourteen Years Before Ray Passed Away. This New And Revised Edition Includes Unpublished Pieces From The Author S Further Writings On Ray, And An Afterword That Takes The Story Forward To Ray S Last Film. It Will, Hopefully, Re-Introduce The Genius Of Ray To A Whole New Generation Of Readers And Film Aficionados.

Satyajit Ray: An Intimate Master is an invaluable sourcework for studies in the work of Satyajit Ray and offers fascinating reading at the same time. Specially commissioned articles by experts and some of Ray's closest associates, relations and friends provide insights into the entire range of the creativity of Satyajit Ray, one of the world's greatest filmmakers—as artist and designer, writer, and filmmaker—and the environment that nurtured him. The contributions unravel features never before touched—upon all those subterranean elements that went into the making of his films and his artistic character. They should serve to open up new approaches to and possibilities for fresh readings of Ray's works in fiction, design and filmmaking alike. The 400-odd illustrations—several of them appearing in print for the first time—bring together a wide range of film stills, working stills, book illustrations, early drawings and sketches, layouts for advertisement insertions, film posters, brochures, portraits, caricatures, jacket designs, giving viewers a rare chance of studying the entirety of Ray's visual imagination and artistic craftsmanship. The memoiral, and analytical and critical pieces are supplemented by a comprehensive and thoroughly authenticated documentation, covering Ray's biography, a chronology of his films, filmography, synopses and cast/credits, awards and honours, his contributions to works by others, discography, bibliography, citations received on several occasions, the text of his earliest literary work, reproductions of his earliest artistic works, and portfolios on the making of Pather Panchali, his masterwork, and his involvement with Sandesh, the popular children's periodical launched by his grandfather that Ray revived in 1961, from a passionate concern for the enlightenment of children, a project that grew to be a passion of his in his last years. A selection of reviews of Ray’s films, national and international, arranged chronologically and filmwise offer a record of the world’s perception of and response to his films over four decades, in historical perspective. The volume as a whole, the product of several years’ research, has drawn on the rich collection of relevant documentary and archival material and memorabilia lying with the Ray family; and with the thoroughness that has gone into its documentation, it will be, for several years to come, the most authoritative and exhaustive and reliable work on Satyajit Ray.

Satyajit Ray directed 36 films, including feature films, documentaries and shorts. He was also a fiction writer, publisher, illustrator, calligrapher, graphic designer and film critic. He authored several short stories and novels, primarily aimed at children and adolescents. Feluda, the sleuth, and Professor Shonku, the scientist in his science fiction stories, are popular fictional characters created by him.