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Sandip Ray; (inset) A rare photograph where the late Satyajit Ray was caught on camera, having a light moment DNA
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Sandip Ray has recently accomplished a tough task — he’s managed to bring out the second book of original writings by his father, Oscar Award winner Satyajit Ray.
“Deep Focus has writings by my father from 1949. We, at Ray Society, got in touch with a lot of Ray collectors in and around Kolkata, who willingly helped us with whatever writings they had. The book is quite a substantial collection of essays on Charlie Chaplin, Godard, Uttam Kumar, various international film festivals that he attended with his films as well as a jury member — in short, Deep Focus is his personal cinematic experience,” informs Sandip. And the foreword of this book has been written by another maestro — Shyam Benegal. “A joint publication of Harper Collins and Ray Society, the first name that came to my mind for the foreword was Shyam’s. He has made a documentary on my father and they shared a great work rapport. We coincided the launch of the book with a Ray Memorial Lecture,” he adds.
The other good news for Ray addicts is that Sikkim, a documentary film by Satyajit Ray that was banned earlier is finally out on DVDs. “Pirated copies have been around and the film is on the Internet as well; the reason for the bans still remains a mystery though,” he says.
But there’s more on Ray’s platter. After having brought Feluda (a fictional detective created by senior Ray) to a completely different generation on celluloid, there were rumours that the recently-released Royal Bengal Rohoshyo (The Mystery Of The Royal Bengal Tiger) would his last. But the filmmaker says there is no truth in those rumours. “Feluda series is on! We’ve normally had one in two years and 2013 should see another Feluda film. But this time, there has to be a new team because of the sudden demise of actor Vibhu Bhattacharya, who played a pivotal character in the series. And this will be our greatest task — to find someone of the same calibre.”
Sandip also intends to breathe cinematic life into the cult character Professor Shanku in the near future. “A lot of investors are interested in making this series into films, considering the huge fan following. But this will be an expensive affair since most of Shanku’s exploits were on foreign shores. Also, it needs to be in English as most of his acquaintances were Germans or French,” he states.
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