Personality - Satyajit Ray

Satyajit Ray was born on May 2, 1921 in Calcutta. The Ray family was considered intellectual and artistic. It was a family prominent in Bengali arts and science for several generations. Ray's grandfather - Upendrakishore Ray was a famous writer of children's books as well as a pioneer of books and magazine printing in India.

Sukumar Ray, his father, was a creative genius. While studying in the Presidency College, Calcutta, he found the 'The Nonsense Club' . In 1911, he graduated with double Honors in Physics and Chemistry, got the Guruprasanna scholarship from Calcutta University, and set out for England to study photography and printing. He met Rabindranath Tagore in Britain in June 1912 who was on his third visit to the country and they became good friends.

Sukumar Ray went on to become the most famous writer of children's books and humorous verse. He created verbal jugglery and here he was influenced to a great extent by Lewis Carroll. His Heshoram Hunshiar's Diary was an adaptation of Conan Doyle's The Lost World. He edited Sandesh, the family paper, for eight years. He remained ill for the last three years of his life, but even then, he stayed devoted to his work and concentrated on printing technology and recorded his observations in a notebook called 'The Theory Of Alphabets' which sadly remained unfinished.

After a long illness, Sukumar Ray passed away at the age of 35, leaving behind young Satyajit who was about two and a half years old. His mother, Suprabha raised him. Satyajit’s early childhood revolved around his grandfather’s press, U. Ray and Sons. His home was also in the same building and young Satyajit loved to visit the press and watch the process with great fascination. If he was not in the press, he spent his time with his uncles and other relatives who lived on the same premises, each one of whom was an expert in some form of art. Satyajit or Manik, as he was lovingly called, spent hours observing them. Books also formed a part of his childhood. Apart from the fact that his father used to write ‘nonsense rhymes’ and other relatives also dabbled in writing, his mother would read aloud stories to him. Living among so many adults, Satyajit naturally received more than his share of affection and love. But he was by no means spoilt. He also had a couple of playmates almost his age, one of who was Chedi. With Chedi, young Manik made things like powdered glass-coated kite strings and curd-pot lanterns – skills that he put to good use later, to make props for his film.



A drastic change came into young Satyajit’s life when U. Ray and Sons collapsed and Sandesh, the children’s magazine it was publishing had to be closed down. The firm finally wound up in January 1927, and the family house passed in to the hands of the new owners. The large Ray family had to separate and Manik and his mother went to live with his maternal uncle. His mother worked at the Vidyasagar Bani Bhavan Widow's House founded by Lady J.C. Bose, the wife of the renowned Bengali scientist. She earned her living by teaching and sewing. The only financial help she had was a small sum she received every month, for Satyajit’s education.

This change of residence threw Satyajit into a world of a typical middle-class family of barristers and insurance brokers. He had left the world "where East meets fruitfully with the West and science with art." But this change had no major effect on young Satyajit, except that he was often left to his own devices to amuse himself. But he hardly ever felt lonely. He kept himself busy and occupied by reading and looking at books and pictures and by sketching and drawing. He was very observant – especially of adult behavior, which later on helped him form a base for the characters of his films. As a child he was very sensitive to sounds and lighting. He could identify the cars that passed by from the sound of their engines and horns. He learnt some of the basic principles of light by observing sunlight filtering through the chinks and holes in the house, creating a ‘bioscope’ of light and shadows.
Ray spent his days browsing over the ten volumes of the Book of Knowledge and four volumes of the Romance of Famous Lives; Romance Of Famous Lives introduced him to Beethoven, as well as to western painting from the Renaissance to the beginning of Impressionism. He also watched a number of foreign films at the time - Ben Hur, Count of Monte Christo, Thief of Baghdad and Uncle Tom's Cabin. The first sound movie seen by him was probably Tarzan the Apeman. He passed his time in the afternoon by watching the chiaroscuro of sun and shadow peeping through the louvres, reflected of the walls of his room. Along with swimming, he recieved training in judo at the instance of his uncle Subimol Ray from a Japanese teacher Takagi, a former judo teacher at Visvabharati, Shantiniketan. In 1931, at the age of six he got admitted in class six at Ballygunj Government High school. In 1934, he shifted with his mother to Beltota Road in South Calcutta. After he was admitted to school he got a Voigtlander camera and won the first prize for a photograph from The Boy's Own Paper, in England.
Satyajit also enjoyed reading. Apart from the Book Of Knowledge and Romance Of Famous Lives, he read comics, detective stories, specially Sherlock Holmes, and P G Wodehouse. . He preferred to read light English fiction rather then classics. Although he was well read in ancient stories and folktales, his taste for Bengali fiction developed only later.

Perhaps his first encounter with cinema can be traced to the stereoscopes and magic lanterns – popular toys of that period. The magic lantern was a box with a tube at the front containing a lens, a chimney on top and a handle on the right-hand side. The film ran for two reels with a kerosene lamp as the light source. Visits to cinema were mainly confined to foreign films, as Bengali films were considered too passionate for the young mind, which suited Satyajit well enough. Chaplin, Keaton and Harold Lloyd made a lasting impression on him, as did The Thief Of Baghdad and Uncle Tom’s Cabin. He also managed to see several of the forbidden films of Ernst Lubitsch, the prominent film-maker. Gradually, Satyajit started watching more and more films, observing and absorbing the techniques of direction and acting.

When he was seven, Satyajit first visited Shantiniketan. Apart from Rabindranath Tagore, he also met the famous artist, Nandlal Bose there. Tagore was a close friend of both his father and grandfather. He also visited Darjeeling and Lucknow for the first time during this period – two of the few places which would later on have a great influence on his films.

Manik’s formal education began when he was eight and half. He started attending Ballygunj Government High School. Until then, the responsibility of his education had been taken up by his mother. School, to young Satyajit, was just another chance to sharpen his observation. He was an average student and passed his matriculate examination by the time he was 15 years old. At his mother’s insistence, and much against his wishes, Satyajit entered the Presidency College, a college that his father and grandfather also attended. Satyajit himself wanted to develop his artistic skills, perhaps as a commercial artist. He had also started developing an interest in western classical music. The college years were years of understanding western music, frequent film going and the beginning of his collection of books. Not at all ‘scholastically inclined’, Satyajit graduated in 1939. Six feet four inches tall, Satyajit was fully tuned to the West – its literature, paintings, music and films.

It was perhaps with the intention to minimize the effect of western culture on her son, that Suprabha persuaded Satyajit to join Shantiniketan to study fine art.
It is quite probable that it was here that Satyajit came to understand and appreciate Indian art – its true forms and minute details, as against the formal beauty and structure of western art.

While at Shantiniketan, Alex Aronson, Pritwish Neogy, Nandlal Bose and Binode Bihari Mukherjee influenced Satyajit the most. While Nandlal Bose and Binode Bihari Mukherjee were his art teachers, Alex Aronson taught English. Western music brought Aronson and Satyajit together, and they would spend a lot of time listening to music together. Neogy, on the other hand, helped Satyajit broaden his vision to appreciate all kinds of Indian art and sculpture. In 1941, Satyajit, Neogy (who shared his hostel living quarters) and two other art students set out to see the classical Indian art at Ajanta, Ellora, Elephanta, Sanchi and Khajuraho.

Satyajit was an imposing, but a withdrawn figure in Shantiniketan. He was good at whatever he took up, but there were no signs of his genius yet. By this time, he was already in love with Bijoya, who was a distant cousin. His family members were opposed to the marriage, but he had made up his mind about Bijoya and intended to marry her in the future.

It was in Shantiniketan that he was first exposed to film aesthetics. He read Rotha’s The Film Till Now and two books of theory by Arnheim and Spothiswoode and was fascinated by the manuscripts. He now became a serious student of cinema from a mere film fan.

During his stay at Shantiniketan, Ray periodically visited Calcutta to see his mother (and Bijoya). He also visited the cinema and browsed for books and records in libraries. In 1942, he left Shantiniketan without completing the five-year course. He confessed that, "In the two and a half years, I had time to think, and time to realize that, almost without my being aware of it, the place had opened windows for me. More than anything else, it had brought me an awareness of our tradition, which I knew would serve as a foundation for any branch of art that I wished to pursue."

After leaving Shantiniketan, Satyajit took up a job in an advertising agency, D J Keymer, as a junior visualiser. He was paid Rs 80 per month. He became its art director within a few years, and remained there till 1956, when he became a fulltime filmmaker. Even then, he did not take any of his clients' or other executive's suggestions willingly, and would very rarely apply them, even then with the most reluctance. But he was very loyal to his firm and worked hard when the firm was in dire straits. In 1943, D K Gupta, the Assistant Manager of D J Keymer, started a publishing house, Signet Press. It published books in both English and Bengali. He asked Ray to design the jackets of books. Gupta wanted something original, and gave Ray a free hand. Some of his best jackets include poetry anthologies of Bisnu Dey and Jibanananda Das, Jim Corbett’s Maneaters Of Kumaon, and Nehru’s Discovery Of India (done in 1946). He had also begun illustrating books and in 1944 made some wood cuts for an abridged version of Pather Panchali meant for children. For many years, even before his entry into cinema, Ray’s name was better known as a cover designer.

In spite of it being financially rewarding, Satyajit’s relationship with Gupta had its ups and downs. Two major incidents bothered Ray. One was the publication of his father’s books in a different format and with new illustrations, and the other was the rejection of a manuscript by Aronson. But on the whole, Gupta provided him with an opportunity not only to earn money, but also to experiment with a wide range of styles and techniques of drawing, painting and typography. It also familiarized him with Bengali fiction, giving him a clear sense of the strengths and weaknesses of Bengali literature from the literary as well as visual point of view.
The Bengal Famine of 1943-44 hardly had any effect on Ray and he contributed nothing. He did feel a sense of shame later. The period between 1943 and 1947 was turbulent. The partition of India followed the Famine and Calcutta was flooded with refugees. During the Second World War, the Japanese bombarded Calcutta. But the arrival of American GI’s and other allied servicemen, revitalized the cultural life of the city. Ray was now able to see movies not even released in London. Excellent concerts, both western and Indian – were held, which Satyajit attended. He also enjoyed jazz, for a while. He heard Isaac Stern and also Narayana Menon playing Bach on the veena. He also enjoyed listening to young Ravi Shankar. He taught himself western musical notation by comparing the score with his phenomenal music memory.

Ray had formed a habit of meeting his friends at a coffee house. Every topic was covered in their discussion, except for politics and philosophy. Ray, along with Chidananda Das Gupta had formed the Film Society in 1947. It was the second film society to be started in India. The official red tape and the prejudice of the traditional middleclass to films and film people created quite a few problems. They found it difficult to find a proper meeting place. Moreover, the membership remained at 25 for about five years and not all of them paid their dues regularly. Despite these problems, the Society managed to show a lot of good films. They managed to get some good prints of films like Battleship Potemkin and Un Carnet De Bal. They also started a bulletin, which published some of Ray’s film related articles. When international film personalities like, Cherkasov, Pudovkin, Rehoir and Huston, to name a few, visited Calcutta, they were invited to speak at the Society.

By now, Ray had begun to divert his attention from actors and studios to directors. He would visit the cinema regularly and would make notes in the dark about the various cutting methods and other technicalities. He saw not only the Americans films made by Capra, Ford, Huston, Milestone, Wilder and Wyler, but also Russian films – Alexander Nevsky, The Childhood Of Gorky, Storm Over Asia, Ivan The Terrible – Part I. Einstein and Pudovkin impressed him a lot. He also continued to see Bengali films, which had improved a little, technically, with the arrival of Bimal Roy and Nitin Bose. Uday Shankar’s dance fantasy Kalpana impressed him for its daring cutting. The music and dance of this film also had a lasting impression on him. European films were rarely available, especially after the war ended – this was the main reason, which led him to form The Film Society.

Ray took up writing film scripts, as a hobby, around 1946. There were hardly any takers for a person with no credentials. Moreover, he did not take easily to any changes; if at all his script was read.

In 1948, Ray got his first opportunity to write a script for a film. One Harisadhan Das Gupta had just returned from California and he wanted to film Tagore’s Ghare Baire. He wanted Satyajit to write the script. For over a year, they worked on the film and then started looking for locations, properties, actors, and producer. When they did find a producer, he wanted some changes made in the script. Harisadhan was ready, but Ray was not willing. The project was dropped.

Soon after, Satyajit met Jean Renoir, who was in Calcutta for the shooting of his film The River. Ray soon recognized a real film artist in Renoir, and discussed the outline of Pather Panchali with him. Renoir was amazed by Ray’s knowledge of the West. Ray often accompanied Renoir when he made his trips to locations, but apart from that, Satyajit was not much involved in the shooting of The River.
Around this time two major events of his life took place. He married his childhood sweetheart and distant cousin, Bijoya, and he was to be sent for six months’ training to London by Keymer. They married by signing a register in Bombay, but were persuaded by Ray’s mother and Bijoya’s sisters to have a simple ceremony in Calcutta. Suprabha fell seriously ill soon afterwards and Satyajit and Bijoya were unable to finalize their plans for quite sometime. They finally arrived in London in April 1950, and stayed with Norman Clare, one of his friends. After working for about a month in the London office, he had an unpleasant confrontation with his boss. Ray overheard him taking credit for what was his (Ray’s) work and without abusing him made it clear to Mr Ball (the boss) that he could not work with him. Luckily he was able to join another Keymer agency, Benson.

On September 8, 1953, he became a father of a boy, who was named Sandip, and who would later go on to become an actor and gifted illustrator.

The Rays spent about five months in London. During their stay they visited exhibitions, concerts, plays and of course watched films. Tourism never appealed to him much and he did not visit any place outside London.

Ray saw more than a hundred films while in London. While some like the La Règle du Jen he rates as one of the best, Bicycle Thieves is the film, which ‘goaded’ him to be a filmmaker. He had made up his mind to make the film with non-professional actors, using modest resources and shooting on actual locations, just like De Sica.

They spent a month on the continent, before returning to India. Here also, they visited galleries and concert halls. They attended the Music Festival at Salzburg and the Biennale in Venice. They also heard Furtwangler conduct the Vienna Philharmonic in Mozart’s The Magic Flute. They also visited Lucerne and Venice, which reminded him of Benares.

Ray started working on Pather Panchali when he was on board the ship from London. He approached the widow of Bibhutibhusan Banerjee, the author of Pather Panchali, to part with its rights. She agreed and fortunately stuck to him even when more lucrative offers came her way.

On September 8, 1953, he became a father of a boy, who was named Sandip, and who would later go on to become an actor and gifted illustrator.

Despite continued efforts, Ray was unable to find a producer, so he borrowed Rs. 7,000 from his insurance company and Rs. 2,000 from his relatives. With this money he hoped to film enough footage so as to persuade some producer to finance his film. Most of the actors were inexperienced.

Sometime later, the first international film festival was held in India and Ray and his friends rushed from cinema to cinema watching four films in a day for about 15 days. Rashomon impressed Ray greatly as a ‘dazzling proof of a director’s command over every aspect of film-making.’ He was thrilled by its camerawork. The success of the unknown Akira Kurosawa gave further impetus to Ray’s ambitions.

Shooting of Pather Panchali had to be interrupted several times due to lack of funds. Bijoya pawned her jewelry and Ray sold some of his art books and records to raise some money. His friends at the coffee house and Keymer maintained his confidence, with his bosses allowing him to take time off to shoot.

After a gap of nearly one year, in 1954, help arrived from two sources – one was Monroe Wheeler of New York’s Museum of Modern Art and the other the Government of West Bengal. Wheeler asked for the film to be shown at their exhibition, to be held in a year’s time. The Government agreed to finance the film. Ray had to complete the film in one year to be shown in New York and sometimes the Government red tape taxed him. Working against a deadline, Ray worked hard to complete shooting, editing and adding the sound track.

Pather Panchali

The Pather Panchali storyline went in this way - Set in the early part of the twentieth century, the film deals with a Brahmin family, a priest - Harihar, his wife Sarbajaya, daughter Durga, and his aged female cousin Indir Thakrun - struggling to make both ends meet. Harihar is frequently away from home on work. The wife is raising her mischievous daughter Durga and caring for the elderly Indir, whose independent spirit sometimes irritates her ...Apu is born. With the little boy's arrival, happiness, play and exploration uplift the children's daily life. Durga and Apu share an intimate bond. They follow a candy seller whose wares they cannot afford, enjoy the theatre, discover a train and witness a marriage ceremony. Eventually, the elderly Indir dies. Durga falls ill after a joyous dance in the rain. On a stormy day, when Harihar is away on work, Durga dies. On Harihar's return, the family leaves their village in search of a new life in Benares. The film closes with an image of Harihar, wife, and son - Apu, slowly moving away in an ox cart.
The film was well received in New York. In his hometown, Calcutta, the initial response was poor, but as word got around, the theaters started filling up and Ray started getting offers.
The two films of the Apu Trilogy – Aparajito and Apur Sansar, followed Pather Panchali. Ray also received his first of many awards in 1956, when Pather Panchali was sent to Cannes. Aparajito won him the Golden Lion at Venice, the next year.

Aparajito

His film Aparajito meaning 'The Unvanquished' was a sequel to Pather Panchali - The year is 1920. Harihar, Sarbajaya and their ten-year-old son Apu, live in the Temple City of Benaras on the banks of the holy river Ganga. The film opens with Apu wandering the city. Harihar earns a meagre living by reciting the religious scriptures. Harihar falls ill with fever. He collapses at the riverbank. In the early hours of the next morning, Sarbajaya wakes Apu to fetch holy water from the river to put in his father's mouth as he is dying. Harihar's death leaves mother and son to fend for themselves.

The mother decides to return with Apu to live in a village where an old uncle works as a priest. Apu's mother works to support the family. Apu is initiated into priesthood and takes over the old man's work. He is unhappy because he wants to go to school. Apu persuades his mother to send him to school. She makes a sacrifice so that he might pursue his studies. Apu, now sixteen, wins a scholarship and departs for Calcutta, leaving her alone. It breaks Sarbajaya’s heart, but she relents. Her health is failing, and the loneliness in the village takes its toll.

Engulfed in city life – studying during the day and working in a printing press at night to pay for his expenses – Apu grows away from his mother. His visits get shorter as the time passes. This emotional distance unnoticed by the growing Apu, hurts Sarbajaya deeply. She waits silently for her son’s visit as her illness accelerates and falls into a depression. On a night sparkling with dancing fireflies, Sarbajaya dies. Apu comes back to an empty house. He grieves for his mother, but soon finds strength to leave the village for the last time, to carry on with his new life in the city...
During this period, Ray visited the US for the first time. He met Elia Kazan, Paddy Chayevsky and Sidney Lumet in New York. He visited all the major studios in Hollywood and talked to the likes of Stantey Kubrick, George Stevens and Billy Wilder. He found it a little unusual that he met no poets and that the people over there had very little or practically no idea about India.

By this time Ray had resigned from his job at D J Keymer and had taken up filmmaking on a professional basis. He made almost one film per year.

Ray was a versatile artist. He was not only the director of a film but also its writer and composer. Music was very dear to his heart. He also dabbled in writing. He wrote short stories, articles and novels in Bengali. His contribution to children’s literature in Bengali is also noteworthy. Their subjects range from adventure to detective stories, from fantasy and science fiction to horror. In 1961, he revived Sandesh – the children’s magazine founded by his grandfather.

In the mid 1980s, Ray had to interrupt his career, due to ill health. He suffered two heart attacks during the making of Ghare Baire and his son Sandip Ray, completed the movie. Sandip had already begun working as a still photographer while in school and had become Ray’s assistant director by 1976. In 1987, he made a documentary on the life of his father Sukumar Ray; the film also named Sukumar Ray was a short film; it was a tribute to the enterprising nature of Sukumar Ray.

In 1989, he made Ganshatru based on the Henrik Ibsen's play Enemy of the People.

Ganshatru

It is set in a small town in Bengal. Dr. Ashoke Gupta (Soumitra Chatterjee) is the head of a town hospital. Gupta’s younger brother, Nisith (Dhritiman Chatterjee), is the head of the committee running the hospital and a temple. Both are built by a local Industrialist. The temple is also a big tourist attraction.

Dr. Gupta is convinced that the holy water of the temple is contaminated due to faulty pipe-laying. It is causing an epidemic in the town. He warns his brother Nisith. Nisith, the Industrialist and other town officials reject the idea that the holy water might be the cause of the epidemic. They refuse to close the temple to carry out the repairs.

Dr. Gupta wants to write an article in the newspaper to warn people, but giving-in to the pressure from the powerful people, the editor refuses to publish it. Left with no alternative, Dr. Gupta organises a public meeting that is also sabotaged. And Dr. Gupta is proclaimed an enemy of the people.

The film portrayed the strength of a person and equally the frustration and helplessness of a strong person against overwhelming adversity. It also addressed the questions of the late Capital corruption, and manipulation of religion, people, politics and environment.
Before he passed on, he made three such pluvies (or movies that were more plays than movies) marking the years 1988, 1989 and 1990 as if he was counting time and using the medium for the message. After Ganshatru, he made Shaka Prashaka which also addressed issues of the late Capitalism as it impacted family values corroding traditional generational bonding on the inside, and the fetishization of "black" money as the individuated and upwardly ambitious tried to make a living on the outside. To the protagonist-enuciator, who like Ray, is a heart patient, "honesty" becomes an obsessive compulsion mediated in the mood swings of music and madness. The signifier is a son who suffers the swings, seldom talks and is dysfunctional. The third in this Trilogy was Agantuk. An emotionally charged film, Ray literally, plants his own voice in it. He briefly sings three times in place of the enunciator-protagonist. There is little doubt that the protagonist is Ray himself. Ray is a trans-national. His global concerns and questions are articulated locally and nationally as the post-Cold War era is ushered in. Issues that are brought up implicate Ray and his visions: Who is an artist? How do his loved ones measure it? In monetary terms? Who is civilized and who is "primitive"? The world-traveller and the ethnographer reveals his telos at last. He is against narrowness of all sorts, against boundaries, borders and barriers. "Don't be a frog in the well," he tells his young grandnephew as he moves on his next destination.

Satyajit Ray received many labels in his lifetime -- most of them admiring, adulatory, some critical. Critics and scholars have marveled at his craftsmanship, mastery of detail and story-telling techniques. He has been called the last Bengali renaissance man, the inheritor and an exemplar of the Tagore tradition, a classic chronicler of changes being wrought in a traditional society, a humanist, an internationalist and a modernist. All these can be defended and debated. But two charges against him are not defendable : that Ray was not political or not political enough; that he was a humanist and modernist. About the first, one can argue that Satyajit Ray, at a certain level in all his films negotiated the polyps of the political Unconscious . However, the way he did it, the ways used to change over time and that too dynamically but not losing their unique impact. Second, Ray was a modernist in the sense that his medium was a modern invention that he used to perfection. However, this mostly, applied to the use of the medium and not to the material he grafted on it. The latter came in various shades of Indian life, particularly life in Bengal. He attempted to represent this, mediated by great artistic sensibility and with attentiveness to complexity and diversity. The East/West confluence produced a modernity in Bengal that can be traced to antecedents in prior histories of early modernities outside the Modern West. The same thing can be said about humanism which certainly has a long and illustrious tradition in India.

Ray's films illuminated lives. No one made films on such diverse subjects before him the way he did; and it remains to be seen whether another director would do so in the future. Whatever Ray was, it is impossible, as he said himself, to label him or put him in a pigeonhole.

Satyajit Ray resumed filmmaking and continued to work till 1992, when he again fell ill. He received the Lifetime Achievement Oscar and Bharat Ratna from his sickbed in Calcutta.

On April 23, 1992, this extremely gifted artist passed away but not without first immortalizing himself forever in the world of cinema...the arena in which he will keep on shining forever.

Achievement

Rarely has an artist received so many awards as Satyajit Ray did and that too during his lifetime. Apart from all the personal awards particularly each of Ray’s films received one award or another, and some like Pather Panchali received several. In fact, the Apu Trilogy, (consisting of Pather Panchali, Aparajito and Apur Sansar) received a total of over 20 awards, both national and international.

To list all the awards is not possible, and so one has to be satisfied with a small sample of the vast spectrum.

Pather Panchali received a total of 11 awards, which included Ray’s first international award – Best Human Document, Cannes, 1956, as well as his first national award – President’s Gold and Silver Medals, New Delhi, 1955. Aparajito received about six awards. Both these films received awards for the best direction and more than one award for the best film. Of the four awards received by Apur Sansar, one was for the best original and imaginative film.

Jalsaghar and Asani Sanket both received awards for their music along with several other awards. Some of Ray’s other awards winning films are–

Teen Kanya (three awards)

Charulata (four awards)

Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne (four awards)

Asani Sanket (three awards)

Shatranj Ke Khilari (one award)

Joi Baba Felunath received the Best Children’s Film award in New Delhi in 1978.

Ray won some of the awards repeatedly, year after year. He won the President’s Gold Medal several times for films like Devi (1960), Apur Sansar (1959) Charulata (1964) and Rabindranath Tagore (1961), a documentary film.

In a span of about 30–35 years, Ray received more than 25 personal awards, including Magsaysay Award (1967), Special Award, Berlin film Festival (1978), Special Golden Lion and Sr Mark, Venice Film Festival (1982) and Fellowships of The British Film Institute (1983) and Sangeet Natak Academy, India (1986). In the last days of his life Ray received two very prestigious awards – one national and the other international. He received the Bharat Ratna as well as the Oscar for Lifetime Achievement. He accepted both from his sickbed in Calcutta.