Satyajit Ray wrote, scored, cast and edited his debut, then took Cannes
A Calcutta commercial artist saw Bicycle Thieves in London and went home determined to make films. His first, Pather Panchali, collected eleven international prizes. Satyajit Ray went on to direct 36 films, invent a detective beloved by Bengali children, and win a record 37 Indian National Film Awards.
Ray was born in Calcutta on 2 May 1921 into a family steeped in print. His grandfather, Upendrakishore Ray Chowdhury, was a writer, illustrator, amateur astronomer and Brahmo Samaj leader who ran a press called U. Ray and Sons and launched the children's magazine Sandesh. His father Sukumar wrote pioneering Bengali nonsense verse but died when Satyajit was two, so the boy grew up among the printing machines in his grandfather's house, fascinated by how Sandesh was produced.
He started out designing advertisements. Two encounters changed his direction: meeting the French director Jean Renoir, who had come to India to shoot The River, and watching Vittorio De Sica's neorealist Bicycle Thieves (1948) while visiting London. Back in India he began his first film. On Pather Panchali (1955) he handled script, casting, music and editing and even drew the credits and posters. At Cannes in 1956 it received the first ever Best Human Document award, and it grew into the Apu Trilogy with Aparajito and The World of Apu.
Later work included The Music Room, Charulata and a run of Goopy and Bagha fantasies stretching to 1992. Ray was also a prolific children's author. His inventions include the sleuth Feluda, the scientist Professor Shonku and a storytelling uncle named Tarini Khuro, alongside illustrations, calligraphy, lyrics and magazine editing.
Honours piled up. Besides his national awards, among them the Dadasaheb Phalke, he won a Golden Lion, a Golden Bear and two Silver Bears; no other Indian has taken top prizes at two of the three major festivals. Oxford gave him an honorary degree in 1978. In 1992 came an honorary Oscar and the Bharat Ratna, India's highest civilian award, weeks before his death on 23 April. For his centenary in 2021, India's international film festival renamed its lifetime achievement prize after him.
Source: Satyajit Ray
