Satyajit Ray Biography and Works.

Satyajit Ray was born on May 2, 1921 in Calcutta (now Kolkata). He joined Shantiniketan, Rabindranath Tagore’s university to study art. Satyajit Ray began his career as a commercial artist. His father, Sukumar Ray, was an eminent poet and writer in the history of Bengali literature.

Satyajit Ray’s first movie Pather Panchali was an immediate success and won the Grand Prix at the ‘Cannes Festival’. Pather Panchali with his Aparajito and Apur Sansar are known as ‘Apu Trilogy’.

In 1948, he married Bijoya Das, a former actress/singer who also happened to be his cousin. Their only offspring, Sandip, was born in 1953.

His later films include Jalsaghar, Kanchenjunga, Charulata, Ashanti Sanket, The Chess Players, The Home and The World, Ganashatru, and Agantuk Ray also edited Sandesh, a children’s magazine and wrote numerous fictions and non fiction works. In 1992, he received an honorary Academy Award.

In 1983, Satyajit Ray suffered a massive heart attack. He died on April 23, 1992 in Calcutta after having some 40 films and documentaries and numerous books and articles to his credit.

Trivia

He was voted the 25th Greatest Director of all time by the Entertainment weekly.

In 1967, he wrote a script, The Alien’. Columbia Pictures was in talks to produce it. Peter Sellers and Marlon Brando were supposed to be up for the leading roles. However, Ray was surprised to find that the script he had co-written had already been copyrighted and the fee appropriated. Brando dropped out of the project and though an attempt was made to bring James Coburn in to replace him, Ray was disillusioned, had enough of Hollywood machinations and returned to Calcutta.