Satyajit Ray Festival in Palo Alto

The Stanford Theatre is featuring a festival of films directed by Indian film-maker Satyajit Ray. Organized in collaboration with our faculty affiliate Professor Usha Iyer (Stanford Art & Art History), the series will commence on January 11, 2019 with the screening of The Apu Trilogy. The festival is open to the public and tickets are required. Please visit the Stanford Theatre's website for full schedule and further information.

Satyajit Ray (1921-1992) was an Indian Bengali filmmaker, screenwriter, graphic artist, music composer and author, widely regarded as one of the greatest filmmakers of the 20th century. Starting his career as a commercial artist, Ray was drawn to independent filmmaking after meeting French filmmaker Jean Renoir and viewing Vittorio De Sica's Italian neorealist film Bicycle Thieves (1948). His first film, Pather Panchali (1955), won eleven international prizes, including the inaugural Best Human Document award at the 1956 Cannes Film Festival. This film, along with Aparajito (1956) and Apur Sansar (The World of Apu) (1959), constitute The Apu Trilogy. Ray received many major awards in his career, including 32 Indian National Film Awards, a Golden Lion, a Golden Bear, two Silver Bears, a number of additional awards at international film festivals and award ceremonies, and an Academy Honorary Award in 1992. The Government of India honored him with the Bharat Ratna, its highest civilian award, in 1992. 

The film festival will run simultaneously with Professor Iyer's FILMSTUD 134/334: The Art Cinema of India course offered in Winter 2019 quarter.  Registered students will engage with the broader scholarship on art cinema, exploring social realist New Wave cinemas, contemporary indie films, "parallel cinema" movement, transnational networks, exhibition circuits, and funding and censorship frameworks. As part of the course, participants will watch and discuss the following films in McMurtry Building at 5:30 pm on the following Tuesdays. Please note that discussions are free and open to community members and that seating is limited: 

  • January 8 - Charulata (The Lonely Wife, Satyajit Ray, Bengali, 1964, 1h 57m)
  • January 15 - Subarnarekha (The Golden Thread, Ritwik Ghatak, Bengali, 1965, 2h 23m)
  • January 22 - Calcutta 71 (Mrinal Sen, Bengali, 1972, 1h 41m)
  • January 29 - Aakrosh (Govind Nihalani, Hindi, 1980, 2h 24m)
  • February 5 - Elippathayam (Rat Trap, Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Malayalam, 1981)
  • February 12 - Uski Roti (A Day's Bread, Mani Kaul, Hindi, 1969)
  • February 19 - Khayal Gatha (The Saga of Khayal, Kumar Shahani, Hindi, 1989)
  • February 26 – Short films:
    • And I Make Short Films (S.N.S. Sastry, 1968, 15m)
    • Kramasha (To be Continued, Amit Dutta, 2007, 22m)
    • Straight 8 (Ayisha Abraham, 2005, 17m)
    • Events In A Cloud Chamber (Ashim Ahluwalia, 2016, 21m)
    • Antaral (Endnote, Ashish Avikunthak, 2005, 18m)
    • Ceasural, Variations 1 and 2 (Raqs Media Collective, 2007, 8m)
  • March 5 - Court (Chaitanya Tamhane, Marathi, 2014, 1h 56m)