The Cinema Of Satyajit Ray

Impoverished priest Harihar Ray, dreaming of a better life for himself and his family, leaves his rural Bengal village in search of work. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with The Film Foundation in 1996.

An aging, decadent landlord’s passion for music becomes the undoing of his legacy as he sacrifices his wealth in order to compete with the opulent music room of his younger, richer neighbour.

A devout upper-class Hindu has a vision in a dream that his daughter-in-law is the human incarnation of the Goddess Kali and begins worshipping her.

In the year 1856, Nawab Wajid Ali Shah is the King of Awadh, one of the last independent kingdoms of India. The British intend to control this rich land and send General Outram to clear way for an annexation. Pressure is mounting amidst intrigue and political maneuvers, but the Nawab whiles away his time in pursuit of pleasure and religious practice. The court is of no help either — noblemen Mir and Mirza ignore all duties and spend their days playing endless games of chess.

The first story is about Nanda, a young man who leaves Calcutta to work as a postmaster in an isolated malaria-infested village. The postmaster is looked after by a young orphan girl, Ratan. His only solace in the village is in teaching Ratan how to read and write. The second story is about a student, Amulya, who returns to his village after finishing his exams. His widowed mother is very anxious for him to marry, and has already picked out a girl. He rejects his mother's choice and, being forced to choose some girl, marries a lively tomboy who is not ready to give up her freedom.

Apu is a jobless ex-student dreaming vaguely of a future as a writer. An old college friend talks him into a visit up-country to a village wedding. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 1996.

An underpaid middle-aged clerk finds a 'parash pathar', a stone that changes iron to gold on touch.

Docudrama about the life of Rabindranath Tagore, Indian polymath—poet, writer, playwright, composer, philosopher, social reformer and painter, who reshaped Bengali literature and music as well as Indian art, becoming in 1913 the first non-European and the first lyricist to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. The film was released during Tagore's birth centenary year.

A wealthy family from Calcutta is on the last day of their vacation in Darjeeling, a hill station at the foot of Mount Kanchenjungha, t he second highest peak of the Himalayas. Until now, they have been unable to catch a glimpse of the peak Kanchenjungha.The family members are dominated by the father, Indranath (Chhabi Biswas), an industrialist. He wants his daughter to marry a man of his choice and hopes that the man will propose if they are left together alone for some time.
Several long walks and long conversations form the main body of the film. The real-time drama unfolds the daughter's feelings about her father's idea, and the negative reactions to this by her mother and others.
By accident, she meets an outsider, Ashoke, a young student who has refused a job offer from Indranath. Though nothing develops between them, his presence coupled with the setting of mountains and the failure of her sister's marriage, prompt her to reject the proposed suitor.
At the end of his walk, the industrialist arrives at a rendezvous point, expecting to meet his family and the successful suitor. None of them is present to greet him. As the mist clears, the peak of Kanchenjungha is revealed in its full glory. But Indranath is too pre-occupied to admire it.
Kanchenjungha was Ray's first original screenplay and for the first time, he was shooting in color. The film shows about 100 minutes (in real time) in the life of a group of rich Bengalis on vacation.Unlike the usual Ray films, it has a fragmented narrative with no central characters, and no straight narrative in the classical sense.
It is a very structured and composed film that uses color and nature to heighten the drama. Ray told his biographer Andrew Robinson: "The idea was to have the film starting with sunlight. Then clouds coming, then mist rising, and then mist disappearing, the cloud disappearing, and then the sun shining on the snow-peaks. There is an independent progression to Nature itself, and the story reflects this."
As the weather becomes misty - the young daughter and the suitor part at that point, Indranath meets Ashoke, and the elder daughter, Amina and her husband have a bitter moment between them. And then when the sun appears again - Amina's daughter comes back to her parents and they accept her, the misunderstanding is cleared up, and the younger daughter and Ashoke develop a tentative relationship with a hint of future prospects.
The characters and the Nature are interrelated in mood. In his later film Asani Sanket (Distant Thunder, 1973), Ray attempted quite the opposite. While the Nature is shown in its full glory and lushness, in contrast, the characters starve and do inhuman things.
As the characters do not change the clothes during the film (it being depiction of a real time event that happens in 100 odd minutes), the colors of clothes too add a dimension to the characters.
About Kanchenjungha, Ray told in an interview to Cineaste magazine, "(It was) a very personal film. It was a good ten to fifteen years ahead of its time... Kanchenjungha told the story of several groups of characters and it went back and forth. ... It's a very musical form, but it wasn't liked. The reaction was stupid. Even the reviews were not interesting. But, looking back now, I find that it is a very interesting film."

The story revolves around a North Indian taxi driver, Narsingh, who attempts to reinvent his life by visiting his native place, but instead gets embroiled in a local Marwari businessman's smuggling and human trafficking business. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2001.

Life at home changes when a housewife from a middle-class, conservative family in Calcutta gets a job as a salesperson. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with The Film Foundation in 1996.

In 1870s India, Charulata is an isolated, artistically inclined woman who sees little of her busy journalist husband, Bhupati. Realizing that his wife is alienated and unhappy, he convinces his cousin, Amal, to spend time with Charulata and nourish her creative impulses. Amal is a fledgling poet himself, and he and Charulata bond over their shared love of art.

A wandering baba initiates a widower layer and his youngest daughter, irritating her boyfriend Satya and the ever-skeptical Nibaran.

Amitabha Roy (Soumitra Chatterjee), a sriptwriter has a breakdown near a tea-estate and he is offered a place to stay by the estate manager (Haradhan Banerjee) at his bungalow. When he reaches, Amitabha finds out that the manager is married to his ex-girlfriend, Karuna (Madhabi Mukherjee). The manager has invited Amitabha to assuage his own boredom # and fails to notice the uneasiness between his wife and the guest. The plot unfolds over a period of approximately one-day when they have dinner, breakfast and go for a picnic # and small gestures rekindle Amitabha's memories. Through a series of flashbacks, he remembers their first meeting, courtship and separation (which was solely because of his lack of courage to make a commitment). Amitabha's current affluence and his suspicion of Karuna's unhappiness leads him to propose to Karuna once again but she is inclined to believe that the time to muster up courage has gone past.

Arindam, a matinee idol, is going by train to collect an acting award. On the train, he is confronted by Aditi, a journalist who somewhat unwillingly starts to take his interview. Arindam, won over by Aditi's naivete, starts to disclose his past, his fears and his secrets.

The story revolves around a retired judge, Mr. Nishanath Sen, who stays at a farm house called Golap Colony (The Rose Colony) at the outskirts of Calcutta. The people who stay in the colony are a strange melee of handicaps, social outcasts and ex-convicts. One day the judge is murdered under mysterious circumstances. The local police assign Byomkesh to the investigation. As a close acquaintance of Sen, Byomkesh is more than willing to solve the murder mystery. Through many twists and turns in the story, he goes on to solve the mystery.

Goopy Gyne and Bagha Byne are banished from their respective villages for being bad musicians. However, with their skills, they succeed in pleasing the king of ghosts who grants them three boons. How will they succeed in preventing the war between Halla and Shundi which is looming large?

Four friends from Calcutta who have very different personalities make a holiday excursion into the country, to a tiny village in the state of Bihar where they set themselves up in a bungalow. A series of minor events, all connected to their respective reactions to their new environment, reveals their characters more deeply.

Siddartha (Dhritiman Chatterjee) is forced to discontinue his medical studies due to unexpected and brutal death of his father. He has to now find a job in stead. In one job interview, he is asked to name the most significant world event in the last ten years. His reply is 'the plain human courage shown by the people of Vietnam', instead of the expected - man landing on moon. The interviewer asks is he is a communist. Needles to say that he does not get the job.
He reaches a coffee shop where he is offered to work for the communist party. When he does not show any interest the party leader tells him about an opening for a medical representative. To escape from the heat and have a snooze, he goes in to a cinema. As a government propaganda newsreel is being shown before the feature, a bomb explodes in the cinema hall. In the stampede that follows, Siddartha, breaks his watch. He goes to a watchmaker but he cannot afford the repairs.
Waiting to cross the road, he notices a sexy girl. He drifts back to his days as a medical student in a flashback. The professor is explaining anatomy of female breast. Many flashbacks and dreams occur to Siddartha through the film.
On his way to hostel, he has an encounter with some hippies. Along with an ex-classmate, he goes out to see a porn film but to their disappointment, the film turns out to be not-so-pornographic.
In such constant wandering in a Calcutta, disintegrated relationships with his sister and a Naxalite (militant communist) brother, his friendship with Keya is only thing that keeps him sane.
Keya is a simple girl. They enjoy each other's company but they cannot make any commitment to each other due to the circumstances.
After yet another attempt at a job interview, Siddartha leaves the big city to take a modest job of a salesman in a far off small town. He writes to Keya that he still cherishes their relationship. And that he has heard that bird call again but this time it is for real, and not his mind. After completing the letter, he comes out to the balcony of his modest room. The bird calls again. He also hears the sombre chants of a funeral procession. As he turns to the camera, the picture is frozen.
This is the first film of the Calcutta Trilogy. The other two were and Seemabaddha (Company Limited, 1971) and Jana Aranya (The Middle Man, 1975). All the three films study the effect the big city of Calcutta has on the educated youth and the price it extracts from them.
The seventies were a difficult period for India and West Bengal. The Corruption was rampant; the Naxalite movement had created havoc in Calcutta. In fact, they had turned parts of Calcutta into 'liberated zones'. By the time the Naxalite movement died down, in 1975, Mrs. Indira Gandhi (then, Prime Minister of India) suppressed the fundamental rights and declared "Emergency" for her own political survival. Her son, Sanjay Gandhi became a dictator of sorts without any official designation. The opposition leaders were thrown into prisons.
About his social responsibilities as a filmmaker, in an interview with Cineaste magazine, Ray commented, "You can see my attitude in The Adversary where you have two brothers. The younger brother is a Naxalite. There is no doubt that the elder brother admires the younger brother for his bravery and convictions. The film is not ambiguous about that. As a filmmaker, however, I was more interested in the elder brother because he is the vacillating character. As a psychological entity, as a human being with doubts, he is a more interesting character to me. The younger brother has already identified himself with a cause. That makes him part of a total attitude and makes him unimportant. The Naxalite movement takes over. He, as a person, becomes insignificant."
In a letter to Seton in 1970, Ray wrote that Pratidwandi was the most provocative film he had made till then. The film is said to have evoked extreme reactions. "People either loved the film or hated it", Dhritiman Chatterjee told Andrew Robinson, Ray's biographer.

Sikkim is a 1971 Indian documentary about the nation of Sikkim, directed by Satyajit Ray. The documentary was commissioned by the Chogyal (King) of Sikkim at a time when he felt the sovereignty of Sikkim was under threat from both China and India. Ray's documentary is about the sovereignty of Sikkim. The film was banned by the government of India, when Sikkim merged with India in 1975. In 2000, the copyright of the film was transferred to the Art and Culture Trust of Sikkim. The ban was finally lifted by the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) in September 2010. In November 2010 the director of the Kolkata film festival stated that upon filming the documentary for the first time, he received an injunction from the court of Sikkim again banning the film.