Satyajit Ray(1921 - 1992) - film director
Satyajit Ray (May 2, 1921 - April 23, 1992) was a Bengali film director whose films are perhaps the greatest testament to Bengali and Indian cinema. He is mostly known for his Apu trilogy (the films Pather Panchali, Aparajito, and The World of Apu.), but has a large collection of works that are accliaimed among the world film industry, most notably by the likes of Akira Kurosawa, Martin Scorcese and Steven Spielberg. He has been called one of the four greatest director/producers of cinema in the world, and Kurosawa famously said of Ray:
"…Not to have seen the cinema of Ray means existing in the world without seeing the sun or the moon."
His Life
Born into a relatively wealthy family in Calcutta, Ray was well-educated and spent many years as a layout artist in a publishing house; inspired by the novel Pather Panchali, he decided to make it into a film and shot it on location using friends as actors, putting up the funding himself. Partway through filming he ran out of funds; the Bengal government loaned him the rest, allowing him to finish the film. The film was successful both artistically and commercially, winning notice at the 1956 Cannes film festival and providing a boon to the Indian film industry.
Ray's work tends to be both realistic and subdued; his early work is compassionate and touching; his later work, while more political, is also at times cynical, but still infused with his typical humor.
In 1962, Ray directed Kanchenjungha, his first original screenplay and colour film.
Satyajit Ray won the Dadasaheb Phalke Award in 1985 for lifetime contribution to Indian cinema. He received the Academy's Lifetime Achievement Award in 1992. He was also awarded the Bharat Ratna in 1992.
In 1967, Ray wrote a script for a movie entitled "The Alien", but failed to get American funding to produce it. 1982's E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial bore many similarities to Ray's work, and Ray believed that Spielberg's movie "would not have been possible without my script of The Alien being available throughout America in mimeographed copies." Spielberg denied this.
Satyajit Ray was also a prolific writer in Bengali. Arguably his most famous written works were the exploits of Feluda, a bengali detective.
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