| RAY FESTIVALS HIT EUROPE |
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Though contemporary India displays a curious indifference to Satyajit Ray and his works, the remaining world, the western hemisphere in particular, presents a lesson in contrast. It may be coincidental that as many as three European countries had decided to celebrate Ray hard on the heels of one another, but that sure shows their enduring fascination for one of the greatest masters of world cinema.
In June 2006, it was in the Portuguese town of Setubal. In October, it was in Valladolid, a city 180 miles from the Spanish capital of Madrid. The following month, it was in Nantes, a French town not too far from Cannes, where Ray’s trailblazing Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road) picked up the Best Human Document Award way back in 1956.
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The countries, which held and continue to hold Ray events on a moderate to large scale, may have some cultural affinity because of their shared European lineage and geographical proximity, but they hardly know Bengal, Ray’s home province where his films are rooted, and Bengali, the language he spoke and made his films in. Yet they recall not only Ray’s contributions to filmmaking by screening his films at well-organized festivals but choose to present him in all his versatile splendour. This bears eloquent testimony to the fact that the appeal of Ray’s cinema and other creative works is on the rise rather than decline in the world at large, and that the tribe of his admirers overseas is growing.
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| Mr.Sandip Ray receiving ‘The Golden Dolphin' awarded posthumously to Satyajit Ray at Setubal, Portugal. |
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| Portugal |
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Portugal kicked off the present wave of the unlinked Ray celebrations in Europe by screening five of his films at Festroia (Festival International de Cinema), held 2 through 11 June in Setubal. The Ray Retrospective at the festival included Mahanagar (The Big City), Charulata (The Lonely Wife), Kapurush O Mahapurush (The Coward and the Holy Man), Nayak (The Hero) and Joi Baba Felunath (The Elephant God). On top of this, the festival panel conferred on Ray the posthumous Lifetime Achievement Award, Golden Dolphin, which was received by Sandip, his filmmaker son who was present there as a jury member along with wife Lolita.
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| Spain |
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Spain was the next to pay the maestro its tribute. It held an exhibition and a film festival in October to mark the formal inauguration of the headquarters of Casa dela India (India House) in Valladolid. The exhibition, opened jointly by Sandip Ray and others, continued till end-December at its present place. The show had on display a large number of Ray portraits by Hirak Sen (who was present) and Tarapada Banerjee, stills from films, and photographic reproductions of sketches, costumes and set designs,
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posters, booklets, music notations, book covers, illustrations, and pages from his scripts and scrap books. But perhaps the best attractions at the show were some clothes used by Ray --- a kurta, a pair of pyjamas and a shawl. A sari, worn by actresses Madhabi Mukherjee and Swatilekha Sengupta during the shooting of Charulata and Ghare Baire (The Home and the World), respectively, too forms part of the exhibits.
The bulk of the exhibits were loaned to Casa dela India by the Kolkata-based The Society for the Preservation of Satyajit Ray Films, better known as the Satyajit Ray Society, which has been engaged since 1994 in the restoration and preservation of the priceless legacies --- both on celluloid and on paper --- that Ray left to the world when he passed away in 1992. The Satyajit Ray Society is the only organization in the world which preserve all the Ray legacies, excluding the majority of the film prints which belong to producers, in the original. The rest came from the Satyajit Ray Film and Study Collection, UCSC. The exhibition and film festival authorities brought out two exquisitely produced souvenirs on Ray on the occasion.
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| France |
France has been especially known for her love of Ray. It was at the French request that Ray donated his original treatment of Pather Panchali containing sketches and jottings to the Cinematheque in Paris. Ray had never done a fully-developed screenplay for the film; he had everything that was not there in the treatment in his head. France had --- on 21–29 November --- her first-ever complete Retrospective of Ray films. This is remarkable news, because India has never had a complete Ray Retrospective to date.
“Ray’s films, like Jalsaghar for example, are regularly shown in France, mainly on television. It's much more rare in movie theaters. Some of them have been released on DVD. But his work is not very well known,” said Alain Jalladeau, director of the Festival of 3 Continents. “Here people have heard of ten films at the most. Considering that Ray did 36 movies and that he is one of the few great masters in the history of cinema, those ten are not enough. That's the reason why we have decided to propose this complete Retrospective of Ray's work. This is the first time in France that a complete Retrospective is gathered. Just after Ray's death, the French Cinematheque had a tribute to him, but could not show all his films.”
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| Festival Bulletin |
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| Souvenir cover to mark Spain Events |
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| ‘Symbol of modern India’ |
Why was Satyajit Ray picked up in particular for the events to open the headquarters of Casa dela India? “Many reasons,” said Cristina Carrilo de Albornoz Fisac, exhibition curator. “First of all, we were moved by his deep humanism and simple and austere way of life. He represented the Renaissance tradition in India and was himself one of the geniuses that life offers from time to time. He was the first film director to create a style of cinema showing the soul of India, and he touchingly mixed the real and the poetic in his films. He was also the symbol of the modern India initiating a dialogue between the East and the West. We wanted to project the many-faceted genius that Ray was, and so we had the exhibition along with the Retrospective.”
The 51st Valladolid International Film Festival, which opened on 20 October, featured a Retrospective of seven Ray classics, which, according to the festival coordinator, were shown for the first time in Spain. The Retrospective was inaugurated on 22 October with a screening of Jalsaghar (The Music Room) to a packed house. Sandip Ray presented the film to the audience comprising people of all age groups. It was followed on the next few days by Paras Pathar, (The Philosopher’s Stone), Abhijan (The Expedition), Nayak, Agantuk (The Stranger), Rabindranath Tagore and Sadgati (The Deliverance).
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Festival of 3 Continents |
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Since 1979, the purpose of the Festival of the 3 Continents has been to discover and show films from Africa, Latin America and Asia. In 1980, a Ray tribute was a major event. Tributes to other Indian filmmakers like Ritwik Ghatak, Guru Dutt and Raj Kapoor were also organized. According to Alain, Satyajit Ray is very well appreciated by the intelligentsia in France. “His name is very well known to intellectuals as well as cine buffs. Of course, older people, the ones who have seen his movies in the sixties and seventies in the then existing cine clubs know him better. But, when showing films such as Pratidwandi (The Adversary) or Mahanagar to younger audiences, we've been impressed by their enthusiasm. They knew Ray's name, but not his films, and they were far from being disappointed,” he said.
Alain’s love affair with Ray movies began when he saw Pather Panchali, which changed the face of the Indian cinema and drew the world’s attention to her. “I have known and loved his films since Pather Panchali,” said Alain. I met him personally for the first and second time in 1980 --- in April in Calcutta (now Kolkata) and in November in Nantes, where he came to present Seemabaddha (Company Limited). Then, in 1982, I came back to Calcutta with the French critic Serge Daney, who wanted to have with him an extensive interview for the daily newspaper Liberation.
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| Festival Guide |
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We mostly had conversations about movies and books and music. He was for example always very eager to hear about European or American films he could not see in Bengal.”
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‘One of the greatests’
Alain’s opinion of Ray and his films is an indication of what the West thinks of India’s cultural ambassador, who, after Rabindranath, built a fresh bridge of East-West understanding. “As a filmmaker, Satyajit Ray simply was and still is one of the greatest of the history of cinema, and I don't mean only in India,” said Alain. “He was always an affable man, a little distant. Of course you would be respectful to him. While chatting with him you became aware how much mixed his culture was, part Bengali but also part English. In this respect, he was very different from pure Bengali directors like Ritwik Ghatak.”
France waited for a complete Ray Retrospective for a long time, and the Festival of 3 Continents took 15 years to plan it. “We thought of this complete Retrospective for 15 years, and we're very proud and happy to pay this kind of tribute to such a great filmmaker,” said Alain.
Reproduced from The Statesman
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Specially Designed Menu Card For the Festival |
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