TO THE GOD OF FILMS, HAPPY BIRTHDAY SIR!

Yes, I’m talking about him whom you guessed reading the title. The magnificent Satyajit Ray. The god of films who has created a history with his works and has left behind a legacy of contributions which is irreplaceable by any other director. The smoothness, the perfectionist, the mind blowing direction, only Satyajit Ray comes to our mind when thinking of this. He was known for his humanistic approach to cinema. He disliked the idea of a film that draws attention to its style rather than the contents. Did I mention just films? Well, no, it’s not just in films where he excelled, but also did when it comes to being an author, or composer or lyricist. He was an all- rounder, about whom it is difficult to put in words, a man of dignity, Bengal’s pride.
 

If you are a film addicted person, and you haven’t watched his work, I’m sorry but you haven’t watched anything then, Even if you are not a film addicted person, anyone not watching any of Ray’s work in his/her entire life, you are missing out on a lot of things. Want some suggestions?

Here you go, try and watch these:
Pather Panchali (1955){this single film has won 11 international prizes,  including the inaugural Best Human Document award at the 1956 Cannes Film Festival.},Charulata (1964), Jalsaghor (1958), Ghore- Baire (1984).

Satyajit Ray was born on May 2, 1921, in an intellectual and affluent family in Calcutta, India. His grandfather, Upendra kishore Ray was a distinguished writer, painter, a violin player and a composer. Ray directed 36 films, including feature films, documentaries and short films. He was also a fiction writer, publisher, illustrator, calligrapher, music composer, graphic designer and film critic. Ray created two popular fictional characters in Bengali children's literature—Feluda, a detective, and Professor Shonku, a scientist. The Feluda stories are narrated by Topesh Ranjan Mitra aka Topse, his teenage cousin, something of a Watson to Feluda's Holmes. The science fictions of Shonku are presented as a diary discovered after the scientist had mysteriously disappeared. Ray also wrote a collection of nonsense verse named Tora Bandha Ghorar Dim, which includes a translation of Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky. He wrote a collection of humorous stories of Mullah Nasiruddin in Bengali. He also penned his experiences during the period when he filmed the Apu Trilogy in his memoirs titled My Years with Apu: A Memoir. He also wrote essays on film, published as the collections: Our Films, Their Films (1976), Bishoy Chalachchitra (1976), and Ekei Bole Shooting (1979).
 

He married his cousin Bijoya Ray in 1945. Together, they had a son, Sandip Ray. He valued work more than anything else in the world, working for 12 hours a day and usually getting to bed at two o'clock in the morning. He loved collecting archival, antique materials, manuscripts, rare gramophone records, paintings and rare books. Now coming to his awards if I start writing his award list, it will be a huge one, so in brief, he  received many awards, including 32 National Film Awards by the Government of India, and awards at international film festivals. He is the second film personality after Chaplin to have been awarded an honorary doctorate by Oxford University. He was awarded the Dadasaheb Phalke Award in 1985 and the Legion of Honor by the President of France in 1987.The Government of India awarded him the Padma Bhushan in 1965 and the highest civilian honour, Bharat Ratna, shortly before his death. At the Venice Film Festival, where he had previously won a Golden Lion for Aparajito (1956), he was awarded the Golden Lion Honorary Award in 1982.That same year, he received an honorary "Hommage à Satyajit Ray" award at the Festival. Satyajit Ray received an Honorary Academy Award in 1992, becoming the first Indian to receive an Honorary Oscars

He is 100 today, physically not here, but still as evergreen in our hearts as always. Happy birthday sir, once again. You’re the best!
                                     

Here’s something:
“…my main preoccupation as a filmmaker … has been to find out ways of investing a story with organic cohesion, and filling it with detailed and truthful observation of human behaviour and relationships in a given milieu and a given set of events, avoiding stereotypes and stock situations, and sustaining interest visually, aurally and emotionally by a judicious use of the human and technical resources…
 

Satyajit Ray

(The new cinema and I, Cinema Visions, July 1980) “

-PURBALI  MANDAL
She is a student of Amity University Kolkata and is pursuing Bachelors in Journalism and Mass Communication (second year). Passionate for fashion, photography, art.