About the Author | Satyajit Ray was born on 2 May 1921 in Calcutta. After graduating from Presidency College, Calcutta, in 1940, he studied art at Rabindranath Tagore s university, Shantiniketan. By 1943, Ray was back in Calcutta and had joined an advertising firm as a visualizer. He also started designing covers and illustrating books. A deep interest in films led to his establishing the Calcutta Film Society in 1947. In 1955, after overcoming innumerable difficulties, Ray completed his first film, Pather Panchali. The film was an award-winner at the Cannes Film Festival and established Ray as a director of international stature. Together with Aparajito (The Unvanquished, 1956) and Apur Sansar (The World of Apu, 1959), it forms the Apu trilogy and perhaps constitutes Ray s finest work. Ray s other films include Jalsaghar (The Music Room, 1958), Charulata (1964), Aranyer Din Ratri (Days and Nights in the Forest, 1970), Shatranj Ke Khilari (The Chess Players, 1977), Ghare Baire (The Home and the World, 1984), Ganashatru (Enemy of the People, 1989), Shakha Proshakha (Branches of a Tree, 1990), and Agantuk (The Stranger, 1991). Both the British Federation of Film Societies and the Moscow Film Festival Committee named him one of the greatest directors of the second half of the twentieth century. In 1992, he was awarded the Oscar for Lifetime Achievement by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science and, in the same year, was also honoured with the Bharat Ratna. Apart from being a film-maker, Satyajit Ray was a writer of repute. In 1961, he revived the children s magazine, Sandesh; he contributed numerous poems, stories and essays to it, and also published several books in Bengali, most of which became bestsellers. In 1978, Oxford University awarded him its D.Litt degree. Satyajit Ray died in Calcutta in April 1992. |