"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."
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