The pandemic obscures the centenary of famed Indian filmmaker Satyajit Rai

Torres Munchau

New Delhi, May 2 (EFE). – The epidemic in India, which has become the global epicenter of the Coronavirus crisis, has led to obscuring celebrations of the centenary on Sunday of the birth of the famous Bengali director Satyajit Rai, the author of some writings. Major works of the seventh art as the Apu trilogy (1955-59).

Ray nació en la capital cultural india, Calcuta, el 2 de mayo de 1921 y desde muy joven comenzó a mostrar grandes dotes para las artes, convertido primero en un importante ilustrador, a lo que siguió luego la escritura, la música y, cómo no , Cinema.

“He made many films, and he was not only a filmmaker, but he was also a writer, painter and music director. He did many things, and he did them in a great way.

Recognition soon came with his first film, “Pather Panchali” (Song of the Road, 1955), a movie that he made with very little resources – he even had to sell his books, records, and some of his wife’s jewelry – which was awarded at Cannes in the “Best Human Document” category.

“Pather Panchali” will be the opening piece for his acclaimed trilogy Apu, with “Aparajito” (1956) and “Apur Sansar” (1959), which traces the youth and adulthood of this iconic character, who will also award him the Leo de Oro at the Venice Film Festival.

This trilogy contains powerful poetic scenes like a windswept field of cache blossoms where Abu and his sister Durga attend the arrival of a locomotive, or when the young woman dances in the monsoon rain while listening to the master’s piece. Ravi Shankar, who composed the soundtrack.

These films will be followed by other masterpieces with important and psychologically charged female characters such as “Devi” (The Goddess, 1960), where a young woman ends up believing the devotion some feel to her as a living Hindu goddess, or “Charolata” (1964), about the isolation of the wife.

Hollywood Way Ray

With over thirty films, Ray passed away in April 1992 in Calcutta, shortly after receiving the first and only Oscar from the Hollywood Academy in recognition of his entire career.

Some prominent Hollywood filmmakers openly declared their devotion and admiration for the Bengali filmmaker, such as Wes Anderson and his homage to Ray in The Darjeeling Limited (2007) and above all Martin Scorsese.

“In the relatively short history of cinema, Satyajit Ray is one of the names we all need to know, and whose films we should watch and revisit, as I do a lot,” Scorsese said in a transcript about Ray published last year in the magazine Satyajit Ray. Indian Express newspaper.

One of Scorsese’s films most similar to the work of the Bengalis is his classic “Taxi Driver” (1976), in which the story contains many similarities to Ray’s film “Abhijan” (1962), in which he narrates the relationship. For the taxi driver Narsing, a sect of warriors, with a prostitute woman and a perfect widow.

Ray’s relationship with American cinema has also been controversial episodes. Indian filmmaker Steven Spielberg has accused that “most of the ideas” of his unpublished text “The Alien”, which was written in 1967 and has since circulated in Hollywood, was found in his film “ET, the extraterrestrial” (1982).

Outside the United States, other great directors such as the Japanese Akira Kurosawa showed their passion for the Indian filmmaker, of which he even said: “If you’ve never seen Satyajit Ray before, it’s as if you’ve never seen the sun or the moon before.”

This passion for Satyajit Ray continues, his son Sandeep said, “There is a lot of activity around the world, a lot of people are looking for his films, they are restoring them,” something that “unfortunately” cannot be reflected this year in its centenary. Because of the epidemic.

This relationship between the West and the work of the Bengali filmmaker, which was sometimes not fully understood, was explained by Satyajit Ray himself in her extrapolation of Indian cinema, in an article he published in 1982 that appeared in his 2011 book “Deep Focus, Connections About” Cinema.

“It is more important for the West to see our films now than to understand them. In any case, real understanding will take time. For a long time in contempt, India will not reveal its secrets to the West so easily, because the cows here are still sacred, and God follows it. Being a phallus,” Bengali concluded. EFE

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