Victor Banerjee is an Indian actor who appears in English, Hindi, Bengali and Assamese language films. He has worked for directors such as Roman Polanski, James Ivory, Sir David Lean, Jerry London, Ronald Neame, Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen, Shyam Benegal, Montazur Rahman Akbar and Ram Gopal Varma. He won the National film award for best supporting actor for the film Ghare Baire. He was awarded the Padma Bhushan, India's third highest civilian award, in 2022 by the Indian Government in the field of art.
Charulata is a 1964 Indian drama film written and directed by Satyajit Ray. Based upon the novel Nastanirh by Rabindranath Tagore, it stars Soumitra Chatterjee, Madhabi Mukherjee and Sailen Mukherjee. The film is considered one of the finest works of Ray.
Mahanagar is a 1963 Indian Bengali-language drama film written and directed by Satyajit Ray. Starring Madhabi Mukherjee in the leading role and based on the short story Abataranika by Narendranath Mitra, it tells the story of a housewife who disconcerts her traditionalist family by getting the job of a saleswoman. The film marked the first screen appearance of Jaya Bhaduri, one of Hindi cinema's leading actresses.
Professor Shonku is a fictional scientist created by Satyajit Ray (1921–1992) in a series of Bengali science fiction books published from 1965. He is one of the most important characters in the science fiction of Bengal. His full name is Trilokeshwar Shonku, and by occupation, he is a physicist and an inventor. He is the son of Dr. Tripureshwar Shonku.
Pratidwandi is a 1970 Indian Bengali drama film written and directed by Satyajit Ray based on the novel by Sunil Gangopadhyay. It is the first part of the Calcutta Trilogy. Set during the period of the Naxalite movement in Bengal, Pratidwandi tells the story of Siddharta, an educated middle-class man caught up in the turmoil of social unrest. Corruption and unemployment are rampant, and Siddhartha cannot align himself with either his revolutionary activist brother or his career-oriented sister. The film is known for experimenting with techniques such as photo-negative flashbacks.
Satyajit Ray (1921–1992), a Bengali film director from India, is well known for his contributions to Bengali literature. He created two of the most famous characters in Feluda the sleuth, and Professor Shonku the scientist. He wrote several short novels and stories in addition to those based on these two characters. His fiction was targeted mainly at younger readers, though it became popular among children and adults alike.
Subrata Mitra was an Indian cinematographer. Acclaimed for his work in The Apu Trilogy (1955–1959), Mitra often is considered one of the great Indian cinematographers.
Rabindranath Tagore is a 1961 Indian documentary film written and directed by Satyajit Ray about the life and works of noted Bengali author Rabindranath Tagore. Ray started working on the documentary in early 1958. Shot in black-and-white, the finished film was released during the birth centenary year of Rabindranath Tagore, who was born on 7 May 1861. Ray avoided the controversial aspects of Tagore's life in order to make it as an official portrait of the poet. Though Tagore was known as a poet, Ray did not use any of Tagore's poetry as he was not happy with the English translation and believed that "it would not make the right impression if recited" and people would not consider Tagore "a very great poet," based on those translations. Satyajit Ray has been reported to have said about the documentary Rabindranath Tagore in his biography Satyajit Ray: The Inner Eye by W. Andrew Robinson that, "Ten or twelve minutes of it are among the most moving and powerful things that I have produced."
Bansi Chandragupta (1924–1981) was an Indian art director and production designer, regarded among the greatest of art directors of Indian film industry. He won Filmfare Best Art Direction Award thrice, for Seema in 1972, for Do Jhoot in 1976 and for Chakra in 1982. He was awarded Evening Standard British Film Award posthumously for "best technical/artistic achievement" in 1983. He was born in 1924 in Sialkot, Punjab, British India and died on 27 June 1981 in Brookhaven, New York, United States.
Sandip Ray is an Indian film director and music director who mainly works in Bengali cinema. He is the only child of the famous Bengali director Satyajit Ray and Bijoya Ray.
Chidananda Das Gupta —family name sometimes spelled 'Dashgupta' and 'Dasgupta'—was an Indian filmmaker, film critic, a film historian and one of the founders of Calcutta Film Society with Satyajit Ray in 1947. He lived and worked in Calcutta and Santiniketan.
Karuna Banerjee was a Bengali actress best known for her role in Satyajit Ray's The Apu Trilogy (1955–1959) as the long suffering mother, Sarbajaya. She was nominated for Best Actress at the 1959 BAFTA Awards for her performance in Aparajito (1956), the second part of The Apu Trilogy. She appeared in a number of other films after that, including Ray's Devi (1960) and Kanchenjungha (1962).
Calcutta Film Society was India’s second film society in the city of Kolkata, West Bengal, India. It was founded in 1947, just after independence, by Satyajit Ray, Chidananda Dasgupta, RP Gupta, Bansi Chandragupta, Harisadhan Dasgupta and others. The 1925 silent film directed by Sergei Eisenstein, The Battleship Potemkin was the first film screened at the film society, which over the years developed the reputation of having the "most cine-literate audiences in the country". It was revived in 1956 with the efforts of stalwarts like Dasgupta, Vijaya Mulay, Diptendu Pramanick and Satyajit Ray.
Bijoya Ray was the wife of the Indian filmmaker Satyajit Ray. Their son Sandip Ray is also a film director. Bijoya and Satyajit were second cousins. After a long courtship, they were married in 1949. Bijoya Ray acted and sang playback song in a Bengali feature film called Shesh Raksha in 1944 and also acted in the documentary Gaach by Catherine Berge in 1998. She died in Kolkata on 2 June 2015, aged 97, after suffering from acute pneumonia.
Sandesh is a Bengali children's magazine. It was first published by Upendrakishore Ray in 1913 through his publishing company, M/s U. Ray and Sons. The original partners of the venture were Upendrakishore and his sons Sukumar and Subinoy. Its publication had to be stopped twice. The current phase is the third and longest running one, spanning more than 59 years.
Satyajit Ray was an Indian filmmaker, screenwriter, documentary filmmaker, author, essayist, lyricist, magazine editor, illustrator, calligrapher, and music composer. Ray is widely considered one of the greatest filmmakers of all time. He is celebrated for works such as The Apu Trilogy (1955–1959), The Music Room (1958), The Big City (1963) and Charulata (1964). Ray was born in Calcutta to renowned writer Sukumar Ray who was prominent in the field of arts and literature. Starting his career as a commercial artist, he was drawn into independent filmmaking after meeting French filmmaker Jean Renoir and viewing Vittorio De Sica's Italian neorealist film Bicycle Thieves (1948) during a visit to London.
Bengali cinema, also known as Tollywood, refers to the Indian Bengali language film industry based in the Tollygunge region of Kolkata, West Bengal, India. The origins of the nickname Toollywood, a portmanteau of the words Tollygunge and Hollywood, dates back to 1932. It was a historically important film industry, at one time the centre of Indian film production. The Bengali film industry is known for producing many of Indian cinema's most critically acclaimed global Parallel Cinema and art films, with several of its filmmakers gaining prominence at the Indian National Film Awards as well as international acclaim.
David McCutchion was an English-born academic, and a pioneer in a number of original strands of scholarship in Indian studies before his early death at age 41. Popularly known as "Davidbabu", in his short life, he made a major contribution to the study of Hindu terracotta and brick temples of Bengal and was also one of the first scholars to write a study of the emerging field of Indian writing in English.
Federation of Film Societies of India (FFSI) is the umbrella body of film-screening societies in India. FFSI is currently a member of the International Federation of Film Society that has its Central Office in Paris. The international organisation is an associate member of UNESCO.
The International Film Festival of India (IFFI), founded in 1952, is one of the most significant film festivals in Asia. Held annually, currently in the state of Goa, on the western coast of the country, the festival aims at providing a common platform for the cinemas of the world to project the excellence of the film art; contributing to the understanding and appreciation of film cultures of different nations in the context of their social and cultural ethos; and promoting friendship and cooperation among people of the world. The festival is conducted jointly by the Directorate of Film Festivals and the state Government of Goa.
