Our Films, Their Films

This book brings together Satyajit Ray's major writings and talks on film making and film makers, and presents them in two sections. 'Our Films' is devoted mainly to his own experiences and contains many interesting anecdotes, but also has observations to offer on trends in Indian films. 'Their Films' deals with some films from abroad that have become landmarks in the history of the cinema from the silent era to the present day. "When Satyajit Ray's film Pather Panchali was presented at the 1956 Cannes Film Festival, its impact was immediate and enormous. Much as Rashomon had opened Western eyes to the riches of Japanese films two years earlier, so did Ray's poetic masterpiece prove a revelation of Indian cinema. Over the next thirty years he directed a series of works (including The Apu Trilogy, The Music Room, Charulata, and Devi) that is one of the truly great legacies to film history, works valued as much for their lyrical grace as for their depth of feeling, an empathy that led many critics to regard him as a worthy heir to Chekhov. Our Films, Their Films is the first collection of Ray's major writings to be published in this country--an astute, witty, often impassioned series of essays that consider the infinite, and often revolutionary, possibilities of the film medium. The opening section of the book, "Our Films," examines the state of Indian cinema when Ray began working within it, the technical and artistic challenges he faced as a director, and his hope for the development of an authentic Indian cinematic New Wave. "Their Films," in contrast, treats the Western films and filmmakers that Ray most admired and learned from--Jean, Renoir, Chaplin, John Ford, and especially the Italian neorealists---as well as Japanese masters like Kurosawa and Mizoguchi. Our Films, Their Films is not only a major contribution to film studies but a revealing and affecting meditation on the power of films to inspire the passions of the individual artist as powerfully as the soul of an entire country. Satyajit Ray was born in Kolkata in 1921. He worked in an advertising agency until the release of his first film, in 1955, and went on to make thirty feature films and five nature documentaries, and won nearly every major film award. In 1992 he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Ray was also a gifted composer and writer. He died in 1992."--Jacket