Plot

The short summarised Biography of Legendary Pioneer Filmmaker, Mr Satyajit Ray, whose film work have won him Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement (Oscars 1992), Golden Lion at Venice Film Festival and Bharat Ratna.

As the first rays of the sun grace the city of joy, we embark on a journey through time, tracing the footsteps of a visionary, a Genius who redefined cinema - Satyajit Ray. In the land where the Ganges whispers tales of the past, a prodigy was taking his first steps. Born into a family of artists and poets, young Satyajit was a dreamer. In the bustling lanes adorned with art and literature, a young Ray nurtured his creativity, sketching not just figures, but the dreams of a new India. Satyajit Ray was born on May 2nd, 1921, in an intellectual and affluent family in Calcutta, India. His grandfather, Upendrakishore Ray, was a distinguished writer, painter, a violin player and a music composer. He was also a pioneer in half-tone block making and founded one of the finest presses in the country - "U. Ray & Sons". He died six years before Satyajit Ray was born. His father, Sukumar Ray (1887-1923), the eldest son of Upendra Kishore, studied printing technology in England and joined the family business. He too was an eminent poet, writer and illustrator of nonsense literature in the tradition of Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear. Sukumar Ray fell ill the year Satyajit Ray was born with a dreaded tropical disease of the time - Kala-azar. He regularly contributed poems, stories and illustrations to 'Sandesh', a children's magazine in Bengali which Satyajit Ray's grandfather had started publishing and printing. Needless to say the child Satyajit was fascinated by the block making and the printing process. In 1880's, Ray family had embraced 'Brahmo Samaj', a sect within Hindu society. It was a time when both Western literature and orthodox Hindu practices such as 'Sati' were prevalent at the same time. The progressive outlook of the Brahmo Samaj strongly influenced Satyajit Ray's work. Many of Ray's films would later show this progressive outlook and a strong aversion to religious fanaticism like Devi, Charulata, Teen Kanya, Sadgati, Ghare Baire and Ganashatru to name a few. At an age of eight, Satyajit joined Ballygunj Government School, until then he had been home-schooled by his mother.

While still at school, he became a Film fan, regularly reading Hollywood trivia in magazines like Picturegoer and Photoplay. Western classical music was his another interest. He would often pick-up gramophone records at flea markets. He matriculated when he was just short of fifteen. Upon his mother's insistence, Satyajit joined college. At the Presidency College, Satyajit read science for the first two years and for the third year, he switched to economics. At the cost of academics, Satyajit was spending more and more time and energies in pursuit of his two interests dear to him - Watching Films and listening to western Classical music on his gramophone. In films, his interest had shifted from stars to directors, savouring offerings of Alfred Hitchcock, Ernst Lubitsch, John Ford, Frank Capra and William Wyler. He graduated in 1939. At the age of eighteen, he decided to give up further studies. Even though he had no formal training, he was planning to become a commercial artist. He had a natural flair for drawing. His mother however felt that he was too young to take up a job. She suggested that he should join as a student of painting at Shantiniketan. After initial resistance, he agreed. In 1940, he joined Rabindranath Tagore's Vishva-Bharati University at Shantiniketan. The desire to learn about Indian arts to be successful as a commercial artist, mother's wishes and the lure of Tagore, perhaps, were too strong to ignore. Trips to nearby villages for sketching exercises, were his first encounters with rural India for the city-bred Satyajit Ray. During this period, he discovered the oriental art, Indian sculpture and miniature painting, Japanese woodcuts and Chinese landscapes... Till then, his exposure to art had been limited to only the western masters. For the first time, he had begun to appreciate qualities of Indian art. The countryside tours drew his attention to use of small details in Indian art to signify a bigger meaning. A quality that his films would later demonstrate prominently.

1955, the world witnessed 'Pather Panchali.' It wasn't just a film; it was a canvas of raw emotions, painting a vivid picture of rural Bengal. On 27 October 1952, he set out to take the first shot. The scene was the famous 'discovery of train by Apu and his sister Durga in the field of Kaash flowers'. "One day's work with camera and actors taught me more than all the dozen books," Ray would write later. The cast was a mix of professional actors and a few with no prior experience in acting. Only Subir Banerjee who played Apu, Karuna Banerjee who played Apu's mother, and the villagers who played other smaller roles, had no prior experience of acting. The rest had either acted in one or two films or theatre.

From the bylanes of Calcutta to the grandeur of Cannes, Ray's cinema transcended borders. His conversations with fellow maestros enriched the global cinematic narrative. The film won the special jury prize for "the Best Human Document". Pather Panchali went on to win a dozen odd prizes at home and film festivals abroad, including Best Actress for Chunibala for her role as Indir Thakrun at Manila.

The success of Pather Panchali gave Ray total control over his subsequent films; in his numerous functions-writer, director, casting director, composer (since 1961). Two sequels based on the novel (Aparajito, The Unvanquished, 1956; Apur Sansar, The World of Apu, 1959) completed the acclaimed 'The Apu Trilogy'. Aparajito, his second film, was about his young protagonist's journey towards freedom from his mother's protection and love. The film won the Golden Lion in Venice.

What followed was a long career as a world-class filmmaker. Until 1981, he would make a feature length film every year. His later films included - Parash Pathar (The Philosopher's Stone, 1958), Jalsaghar (The Music Room, 1958), Devi (The Goddess, 1960), Teen Kanya (Two Daughters, 1961), Kanchenjungha, (1962), Charulata (The Lonely Wife, 1964), Pratidwandi (The Adversary 1970), Shantranj Ke Khilari (The Chess Players, 1977), and Ghare-Baire (Home and the World, 1984).