Pather Panchali
This cycle allows us to discover in restored versions six films directed by Satyajit Ray after the success of The Apu Trilogy and The Music Room, which we are also presenting.These movies, shot from the 1960's onwards, sometimes less known, reflect different aspects of Indian society, just like Ray's cinema, which testifies to the finesse of his direction and the modernity of his subjects. They allow us to apprehend some of the less considered aspects of the Indian filmmaker's work: the feminist dimension of The Big City, Charulata or The Coward, the taste for comedy in The Holy Man, the writing of a rare original screenplay in The Hero, the exploration of color and gender in The Elephant God... Not to mention the art of music, that was composed in these six films by the filmmaker himself.
The beautiful and poetic film Pather Panchali is set in rural Bengal of the 1920s. Pather Panchali focuses on the lives of Apu, the young protagonist of the film, and his family members. The father, a poet and priest, cannot earn enough to keep his family going.
The soundtrackof the film was scored by the great sitar player and composer Ravi Shankar.
Pather Panchaliwon "Best Human Document" at the 1956 Cannes Film Festival, establishing Satyajit Ray as a major international filmmaker. Pather Panchali is today considered one of the greatest films ever made.
Satyajit Ray
Born in 1921 in Calcutta, Satyajit Ray was the son of a Bengali writer and poet and grew up in an affluent, arts-oriented family. He studied economics before joining the University founded by the poet and philosopher Rabindranath Tagore. In his youth, he worked for a while as an advertising illustrator while developing a passion for cinema. Following the independence of India, in 1947, Ray founded the Calcutta Film Society, where many screenings were organized. His discovery of Italian neo-realism and his meeting with Jean Renoir, who came to India to shoot The River, encouraged him to make his first film, Pather Panchali. The film was released in 1955 and earned him international recognition, which was confirmed by his subsequent films. Over the decades, he explored different genres and constituted one of the most impressive and influential works of the 20th century. A complete artist, Satyajit Ray was also a writer, editor, illustrator and composer, signing the music of his own films from the 1960s onwards.
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