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Serious Tribute to Satyajit Ray- Birth Centenary
- Thread starterkomaalrani
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still waiting for answer will post today but one more question before that ,
Pather Panchli was funded and Produced by the West Bengal Govt,. but it was charged under which head ?
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Pather Panchali
Script
Pather Panchali did not have a script; it was made from Ray's drawings and notes.Ray completed the first draft of the notes during his sea voyage to and from London in 1950.[26] Before principal photography began, he created a storyboard dealing with details and continuity.[ Years later, he donated those drawings and notes to Cinémathèque Française .
Casting
Kanu Banerjee (who plays Harihar) was an established Bengali film actor. Karuna Banerjee (Sarbajaya) was an amateur actress from the Indian People's Theater Association, and the wife of Ray's friend. Uma Dasgupta, who successfully auditioned for the part of Durga, also had prior theater experience.
For the role of Apu, Ray advertised in newspapers for boys of ages five to seven. None of the candidates who auditioned fulfilled Ray's expectations, but his wife spotted a boy in their neighbourhood, and this boy, Subir Banerjee, was cast as Apu. (The surname of three of the main actors happened to be Banerjee, but they were not related to each other). The hardest role to fill was the wizened old Indir. Ray eventually found Chunibala Devi, a retired stage actress living in one of Calcutta's red-light districts, as the ideal candidate. Several minor roles were played by the villagers of Boral, where Pather Panchali was filmed.
Script
Pather Panchali did not have a script; it was made from Ray's drawings and notes.Ray completed the first draft of the notes during his sea voyage to and from London in 1950.[26] Before principal photography began, he created a storyboard dealing with details and continuity.[ Years later, he donated those drawings and notes to Cinémathèque Française .
Casting
Kanu Banerjee (who plays Harihar) was an established Bengali film actor. Karuna Banerjee (Sarbajaya) was an amateur actress from the Indian People's Theater Association, and the wife of Ray's friend. Uma Dasgupta, who successfully auditioned for the part of Durga, also had prior theater experience.
For the role of Apu, Ray advertised in newspapers for boys of ages five to seven. None of the candidates who auditioned fulfilled Ray's expectations, but his wife spotted a boy in their neighbourhood, and this boy, Subir Banerjee, was cast as Apu. (The surname of three of the main actors happened to be Banerjee, but they were not related to each other). The hardest role to fill was the wizened old Indir. Ray eventually found Chunibala Devi, a retired stage actress living in one of Calcutta's red-light districts, as the ideal candidate. Several minor roles were played by the villagers of Boral, where Pather Panchali was filmed.
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Making of Pather Panchali
Shooting started on 27 October 1952. Boral, a village near Calcutta, was selected in early 1953 as the main location for principal photography, and night scenes were shot in-studio. The technical team included several first-timers, including Ray himself and cinematographer Subrata Mitra, who had never operated a film camera. Art director Bansi Chandragupta had professional experience, having worked with Jean Renoir on The River. Both Mitra and Chandragupta went on to establish themselves as respected professionals.
Bidhan Chandra Roy, the Chief Minister of West Bengal, was requested by an influential friend of Ray's mother to help the production. The Chief Minister obliged, and government officials saw the footage. The Home Publicity Department of the West Bengal government assessed the cost of backing the film and sanctioned a loan, given in installments, allowing Ray to finish production.The government misunderstood the nature of the film, believing it to be a documentary for rural uplift, and recorded the loan as being for "roads improvement", a reference to the film's title.
Monroe Wheeler, head of the department of exhibitions and publications at New York's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), who was in Calcutta in 1954, heard about the project and met Ray. He considered the incomplete footage to be of very high quality and encouraged Ray to finish the film so that it could be shown at a MoMA exhibition the following year. Six months later, American director John Huston visited India for some early location scouting for The Man Who Would Be King (eventually made in 1975).[45] Wheeler had asked Huston to check the progress of Ray's project.[46] Huston saw excerpts of the unfinished film and recognised "the work of a great film-maker". Because of Huston's positive feedback, MoMA helped Ray with additional money.
Shooting started on 27 October 1952. Boral, a village near Calcutta, was selected in early 1953 as the main location for principal photography, and night scenes were shot in-studio. The technical team included several first-timers, including Ray himself and cinematographer Subrata Mitra, who had never operated a film camera. Art director Bansi Chandragupta had professional experience, having worked with Jean Renoir on The River. Both Mitra and Chandragupta went on to establish themselves as respected professionals.
Bidhan Chandra Roy, the Chief Minister of West Bengal, was requested by an influential friend of Ray's mother to help the production. The Chief Minister obliged, and government officials saw the footage. The Home Publicity Department of the West Bengal government assessed the cost of backing the film and sanctioned a loan, given in installments, allowing Ray to finish production.The government misunderstood the nature of the film, believing it to be a documentary for rural uplift, and recorded the loan as being for "roads improvement", a reference to the film's title.
Monroe Wheeler, head of the department of exhibitions and publications at New York's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), who was in Calcutta in 1954, heard about the project and met Ray. He considered the incomplete footage to be of very high quality and encouraged Ray to finish the film so that it could be shown at a MoMA exhibition the following year. Six months later, American director John Huston visited India for some early location scouting for The Man Who Would Be King (eventually made in 1975).[45] Wheeler had asked Huston to check the progress of Ray's project.[46] Huston saw excerpts of the unfinished film and recognised "the work of a great film-maker". Because of Huston's positive feedback, MoMA helped Ray with additional money.
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Soundtrack
The soundtrack of the film was composed by the sitar player Ravi Shankar, The background scores feature pieces based on several ragas of Indian classical music, played mostly on the sitar. The soundtrack, described in a 1995 issue of The Village Voice as "at once plaintive and exhilarating", is featured in The Guardian's 2007 list of 50 greatest film soundtracks.It has also been cited as an influence on The Beatles, specifically George Harrison.
Shankar saw about half the film in a roughly edited version before composing the background score, but he was already familiar with the story. When Ray met Shankar the latter hummed a tune that was folk-based but had "a certain sophistication" This tune, usually played on a bamboo flute, became the main theme for the film. The majority of the score was composed within the duration of a single night, in a session that lasted for about eleven hours
Shankar also composed two solo sitar pieces—one based on the raga Desh (traditionally associated with rain), and one sombre piece based on the raga Todi. He created a piece based on the raga Patdeep, played on the tar shehnai, to accompany the scene in which Harihar learns of Durga's death. The film's cinematographer, Subrata Mitra, performed on the sitar for parts of the soundtrack.
The soundtrack of the film was composed by the sitar player Ravi Shankar, The background scores feature pieces based on several ragas of Indian classical music, played mostly on the sitar. The soundtrack, described in a 1995 issue of The Village Voice as "at once plaintive and exhilarating", is featured in The Guardian's 2007 list of 50 greatest film soundtracks.It has also been cited as an influence on The Beatles, specifically George Harrison.
Shankar saw about half the film in a roughly edited version before composing the background score, but he was already familiar with the story. When Ray met Shankar the latter hummed a tune that was folk-based but had "a certain sophistication" This tune, usually played on a bamboo flute, became the main theme for the film. The majority of the score was composed within the duration of a single night, in a session that lasted for about eleven hours
Shankar also composed two solo sitar pieces—one based on the raga Desh (traditionally associated with rain), and one sombre piece based on the raga Todi. He created a piece based on the raga Patdeep, played on the tar shehnai, to accompany the scene in which Harihar learns of Durga's death. The film's cinematographer, Subrata Mitra, performed on the sitar for parts of the soundtrack.
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Release and reception
Ray and his crew worked long hours on post-production, managing to submit it just in time for Museum of Modern Art's Textiles and Ornamental Arts of India exhibition of May 1955.The film, billed as The Story of Apu and Durga, lacked subtitles. It was one of a series of six evening performances at MoMA, including the US debut of sarod player Ali Akbar Khan and the classical dancer Shanta Rao. Pather Panchali's MoMA opening on 3 May was well received.
Subsequently, the film had its domestic premiere at the annual meeting of the Advertising Club of Calcutta; the response there was not positive, and Ray felt "extremely discouraged".[66] Before its theatrical release in Calcutta, Ray designed large posters, including a neon sign showing Apu and Durga running, which was strategically placed in a busy location in the city. Pather Panchali was released in a Calcutta cinema on 26 August 1955 and received a poor initial response. But because of word of mouth, the screenings started filling up within a week or two. It opened again at another cinema, where it ran for seven weeks.
It went on to achieve great success in the US in 1958, running for eight months at the Fifth Avenue Playhouse in New York he Bengali government earned a profit of $50,000 from its initial US release,The film reportedly grossed an estimated ₹100 million in total at the worldwide box office
In India the film's reception was enthusiastic. The Times of India wrote, "It is absurd to compare it with any other Indian cinema ... Pather Panchali is pure cinema"
A 1958 review in Time described Pather Panchali as "perhaps the finest piece of filmed folklore since Robert Flaherty's Nanook of the North" wenty years after the release of Pather Panchali, Akira Kurosawa summarised the effect of the film as overwhelming and lauded its ability "to stir up deep passions
Ray and his crew worked long hours on post-production, managing to submit it just in time for Museum of Modern Art's Textiles and Ornamental Arts of India exhibition of May 1955.The film, billed as The Story of Apu and Durga, lacked subtitles. It was one of a series of six evening performances at MoMA, including the US debut of sarod player Ali Akbar Khan and the classical dancer Shanta Rao. Pather Panchali's MoMA opening on 3 May was well received.
Subsequently, the film had its domestic premiere at the annual meeting of the Advertising Club of Calcutta; the response there was not positive, and Ray felt "extremely discouraged".[66] Before its theatrical release in Calcutta, Ray designed large posters, including a neon sign showing Apu and Durga running, which was strategically placed in a busy location in the city. Pather Panchali was released in a Calcutta cinema on 26 August 1955 and received a poor initial response. But because of word of mouth, the screenings started filling up within a week or two. It opened again at another cinema, where it ran for seven weeks.
It went on to achieve great success in the US in 1958, running for eight months at the Fifth Avenue Playhouse in New York he Bengali government earned a profit of $50,000 from its initial US release,The film reportedly grossed an estimated ₹100 million in total at the worldwide box office
In India the film's reception was enthusiastic. The Times of India wrote, "It is absurd to compare it with any other Indian cinema ... Pather Panchali is pure cinema"
A 1958 review in Time described Pather Panchali as "perhaps the finest piece of filmed folklore since Robert Flaherty's Nanook of the North" wenty years after the release of Pather Panchali, Akira Kurosawa summarised the effect of the film as overwhelming and lauded its ability "to stir up deep passions
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Even before Pather Panchali (1955) was released to public screening and greeted as a masterpiece, it had received much critical acclaim in private.
In the Fall of 1954 Monroe Wheeler, a director at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, had come to Calcutta. He met Satyajit Ray and learned that he was making a film. He saw some stills and immediately invited Ray to send the film to the exhibition that would open at MOMA the following year. A few months later, John Huston arrived in Calcutta to scout locations for his film The Man Who Would Be King. He had already heard about Ray and his work. Ray showed him a half-hour of rough cut of the visual highlights — among them the scene of the running train in the field of white Kaash. Huston was moved: "A grim and serious piece of film making, which should go down well in the West," he commented. Wheeler got the glowing report from Huston. A hastily finished first print was sent to New York in May 1955. It was screened without subtitles to an adoring audience moved by the film's humanist appeal and imaginative photography.
Ray alludes to these vignettes and many more in his posthumously published Memoir on the making of the Trilogy (My Years With Apu, A Memoir, by Satyajit Ray; New Delhi: Viking, 1994).
He waited with great anticipation for the Bengali audience's first reaction to the screening of Pather Panchali in August 1955. Using his expertise in publicity gained as an executive at D. G. Keymer & Co., a British Advertising firm in Calcutta, he had designed five billboards for the film. The response was instantaneous. "For the first time I tasted triumph," Ray writes, "with unknown young people elbowing their way through the milling crowd to kiss the hem of my garment as it were." Contrary to common belief that Pather Panchali was appreciated in Ray's hometown only after it had received awards abroad, the film was in fact a box office hit from the day of its premiere. However, it ran only for six weeks. Ray explains why.
The theater in South Calcutta showing Pather Panchali was booked in advance for the screening of Insaniyat, a film by S.S. Vasan, the South Indian Cecil B. De Mille. The day after his film was taken off, Ray was awakened early in the morning by his servant. He had a dhoti-clad visitor: Mr. S.S. Vasan. Asked by Ray what had brought such a distinguished director to his door so early in the morning, Vasan replied, "You! I had been to see your film last night. If I had known that that was the film Insaniyat was going to replace, I would certainly have withheld my opening. You have made a great film, Sir."
Ray had fought against overwhelming odds to come to this point. Backed by a handful of young film buffs, equipped with sketches and notes on select episodes of Pather Panchali, Bibhutibhusan Bandyopadhyay's epic novel, he had approached all the major and minor producers in Calcutta. They included B.N. Sirkar, "a sort of Bengali Louis B Mayer," and a fledgling named Das who was trying to produce from a "seedy hotel in the heart of central Calcutta." These led him nowhere. But Ray had made up his mind. He had decided to go ahead on his own with a hand picked cast of mostly non-professionals and a crew of rookies. His cameraman Subrata Mitra, for example, had not handled a movie camera before. Ray's familiarity with this magic tool extended to possessing a second-hand Leica. While funding these faltering efforts, he had pawned his classical western music collection and his wife's jewelry. The project finally got going through his mother Suprabha Ray's intervention. She knew one Mrs. Bela Sen who was a personal friend of Dr. B.C. Roy, the Chief Minister. Dr. Roy agreed to offer state funding.
Moved by the film, Dr. Roy had arranged for a special screening for Pundit Nehru. Already vested interests in India's filmdom were building barricades against Pather Panchali. Nehru saw the film at Calcutta's Lighthouse Miniature Theater flanked by Dr. Roy and Satyajit Ray who did the occasional translation. Nehru too was moved and quickly acted to ruin all opposition to the film's proposed entry to the 1956 Cannes Film Festival. Officials attending the festival did precious little to publicize or promote the film. The screening took place on a holiday at midnight. The result: most jurors did not show up. Amongst those who did were Ray aficionados — Lindsay Anderson, Lotte Eisner, Andre Bazin, George Sadoul and Gene Moskowitz. They persuaded the Festival Committee to organize a second screening with all the jurors present. Pather Panchali went on to receive the Special Jury Prize for the Best Human Document. Later the film received a dozen or more national and international awards.
The recognition, writes Ray, persuaded him to take the plunge. He decided to give up advertising and turn to film making as a full time career. The choice was a logical one for Ray: He had been training, we now know, for years in the arts and sciences of motion pictures.
https://web.archive.org/web/20131203024456/http://satyajitray.ucsc.edu/articles/getting_started.html
In the Fall of 1954 Monroe Wheeler, a director at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, had come to Calcutta. He met Satyajit Ray and learned that he was making a film. He saw some stills and immediately invited Ray to send the film to the exhibition that would open at MOMA the following year. A few months later, John Huston arrived in Calcutta to scout locations for his film The Man Who Would Be King. He had already heard about Ray and his work. Ray showed him a half-hour of rough cut of the visual highlights — among them the scene of the running train in the field of white Kaash. Huston was moved: "A grim and serious piece of film making, which should go down well in the West," he commented. Wheeler got the glowing report from Huston. A hastily finished first print was sent to New York in May 1955. It was screened without subtitles to an adoring audience moved by the film's humanist appeal and imaginative photography.
Ray alludes to these vignettes and many more in his posthumously published Memoir on the making of the Trilogy (My Years With Apu, A Memoir, by Satyajit Ray; New Delhi: Viking, 1994).
He waited with great anticipation for the Bengali audience's first reaction to the screening of Pather Panchali in August 1955. Using his expertise in publicity gained as an executive at D. G. Keymer & Co., a British Advertising firm in Calcutta, he had designed five billboards for the film. The response was instantaneous. "For the first time I tasted triumph," Ray writes, "with unknown young people elbowing their way through the milling crowd to kiss the hem of my garment as it were." Contrary to common belief that Pather Panchali was appreciated in Ray's hometown only after it had received awards abroad, the film was in fact a box office hit from the day of its premiere. However, it ran only for six weeks. Ray explains why.
The theater in South Calcutta showing Pather Panchali was booked in advance for the screening of Insaniyat, a film by S.S. Vasan, the South Indian Cecil B. De Mille. The day after his film was taken off, Ray was awakened early in the morning by his servant. He had a dhoti-clad visitor: Mr. S.S. Vasan. Asked by Ray what had brought such a distinguished director to his door so early in the morning, Vasan replied, "You! I had been to see your film last night. If I had known that that was the film Insaniyat was going to replace, I would certainly have withheld my opening. You have made a great film, Sir."
Ray had fought against overwhelming odds to come to this point. Backed by a handful of young film buffs, equipped with sketches and notes on select episodes of Pather Panchali, Bibhutibhusan Bandyopadhyay's epic novel, he had approached all the major and minor producers in Calcutta. They included B.N. Sirkar, "a sort of Bengali Louis B Mayer," and a fledgling named Das who was trying to produce from a "seedy hotel in the heart of central Calcutta." These led him nowhere. But Ray had made up his mind. He had decided to go ahead on his own with a hand picked cast of mostly non-professionals and a crew of rookies. His cameraman Subrata Mitra, for example, had not handled a movie camera before. Ray's familiarity with this magic tool extended to possessing a second-hand Leica. While funding these faltering efforts, he had pawned his classical western music collection and his wife's jewelry. The project finally got going through his mother Suprabha Ray's intervention. She knew one Mrs. Bela Sen who was a personal friend of Dr. B.C. Roy, the Chief Minister. Dr. Roy agreed to offer state funding.
Moved by the film, Dr. Roy had arranged for a special screening for Pundit Nehru. Already vested interests in India's filmdom were building barricades against Pather Panchali. Nehru saw the film at Calcutta's Lighthouse Miniature Theater flanked by Dr. Roy and Satyajit Ray who did the occasional translation. Nehru too was moved and quickly acted to ruin all opposition to the film's proposed entry to the 1956 Cannes Film Festival. Officials attending the festival did precious little to publicize or promote the film. The screening took place on a holiday at midnight. The result: most jurors did not show up. Amongst those who did were Ray aficionados — Lindsay Anderson, Lotte Eisner, Andre Bazin, George Sadoul and Gene Moskowitz. They persuaded the Festival Committee to organize a second screening with all the jurors present. Pather Panchali went on to receive the Special Jury Prize for the Best Human Document. Later the film received a dozen or more national and international awards.
The recognition, writes Ray, persuaded him to take the plunge. He decided to give up advertising and turn to film making as a full time career. The choice was a logical one for Ray: He had been training, we now know, for years in the arts and sciences of motion pictures.
https://web.archive.org/web/20131203024456/http://satyajitray.ucsc.edu/articles/getting_started.html
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Road improvement
yes and in the last post there was answer about the theater too, you must have read it