Satyajit Ray
In Search of the Modern
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Scarecrow Press
Published:3rd Feb '07
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
Satyajit Ray is usually credited with ushering modernity into the tradition-bound Indian Cinema. Suranjan Ganguly's book examines six of Ray's major films focusing on issues such as human subjectivity, the importance of education, the emancipation of women, the rise of the new middle class, and the crisis of identity in post-Independence India. He provides close readings of the following films: Pather Panchali (1955), Aparajito (1956), Apur Sansar (1959), Charulata (1964), Aranyer Din Ratri (1970), and Pratidwandi (1970). All six films relate to Ray's interest in how a culture acquires a composite, hybrid shape through the fusion of history and modernity. By placing Ray's films within the socio-historical and cultural contexts of Indian modernity, Ganguly offers a radically different approach, which will enable Western readers to engage more fully with the filmmaker's work.
Ganguly's meticulously researched study of the master, beautifully illustrated with examples of the brilliant camerawork of Ray's films, will be of immense help to the reader in situating his complex cinematic characters in the cultural context to which they belong. * Scope: An Online Journal of Film and Television Studies *
Recommended. * CHOICE, November 2007, Vol. 45, No. 3 *
...provides a solid introduction to the themes and stylistics of the great Bengali director...Ganguly's useful bibliography makes this an excellent place for undergraduates to start. * CHOICE *
Satyajit Ray (1921-1992) revolutionized Indian film and is widely considered to be one of the great filmmakers of all time. In this work, Ganguly (U. of Colorado) examines Ray's negotiations with history and modernity in the six major films he made between 1955 and 1970: Pather Panchali, Aparajito, Apur Sansar, Charulata, Aranyer Din Ratri, and Pratidwandi. Overall, Ganguly sets himself the task of examining how Ray's films convey the filmmaker's belief that the modern is best understood as a total experience in relation to how people express themselves in a changing society, although more specific concerns such as Ray's preoccupation with subjectivity in contexts such as education, urban culture, and the management of grief; the nature of action in a society suspended between apathy and revolution; and writing as a form of female discourse frequently intrude. This is a paperbound edition of a work first published in 2000. * Reference and Research Book News, August 2007 *
ISBN: 9780810859005
Dimensions: 226mm x 152mm x 16mm
Weight: 290g
208 pages