Sharmila Tagore: The film is 55 years old, yet it feels like we shot it only the other day, in a forest, in May
A lmost 56 years ago,
Satyajit Ray
took the cast of
Aranyer Din Ratri
into the forest of Betla (now in Jharkhand) to shoot the film. Over half a century later, the film's lead actress
Sharmila Tagore
, along with filmmaker
Wes Anderson
, presented the restored version of the film at the
Cannes Classics
section.
Anderson, attending the screening as a self-proclaimed Ray fan, introduced the film to a packed theatre.
HOW WILDLY VERSATILE, ENDLESSLY HORRIFIC AND ACCOMPLISHED RAY WAS: WES ANDERSON
'I'm going to speak as a fan of this movie,' Anderson said, as he spoke about his hero before the screening. 'Some years ago, I had an idea or sort of a wish – I thought that I'd like to score one of my own movies to Satyajit Ray's music. The pieces that I loved from the magnificent soundtracks that he composed himself in his early career – starting with Teen Kahaniyaan .
He also wrote music for a couple of other films like Shakespearewallah .
In that process of investigating all this, I learned more and more about what I already knew – how wildly, versatile, adventurous and endlessly horrific and accomplished he was as a movie writer, director, publisher, novelist, short story writer, calligrapher, graphic designer, musician, as an artist. Also how modest, fragile and complicated some of the financing of his projects was.
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Though, he always managed to get it done.'
'The process of resurrection (of the film) was methodical and deliberate,' he added, crediting the persistence of
Martin Scorsese
and the team at The Film Foundation, along with Shivendra Singh Dungarpur and the Film Heritage Foundation, and crucial support from the Golden Globe Foundation. 'With all their persistence over a decade, it finally happened that the film is here. So, we join Satyajit Ray back in the 1970s.
I may say – if he would have cast the movie in America, he might have cast John Cassavetes.'
He singled out performances by the late
Soumitra Chatterjee
and Sharmila Tagore, and said, 'The great Soumitra Chatterjee plays Asheem – intellectual, quite lost, certainly arrogant, awful and a bit oblivious to the damage that they do. But he is searching. The great Sharmila Tagore, who is here with us tonight, plays Aparna who knows much and chooses to reveal a little and who reserves her perceptive intelligence in the story.
Also, the exquisite Simi Garewal who plays a character exceedingly unlike herself.
'
'Days and Nights in the Forest is a special gem among his many treasures'
Ray's cinema, Anderson said, was unmistakably personal. 'Ray's films are like personal projects of a maestro – really a kind of empresario. Along with a famous movie director, I had the impression of him as a famous professor – brilliantly knowledgeable.' Speaking about Ray's literary contributions Anderson said, 'There must have been many disciples – his greatness was always obvious.
Days and Nights in the Forest is a special gem among his many treasures.
I first saw it 25 years ago and it very strangely translated from a very scratchy (film copy) from a Bollywood shop in New Jersey.' The film was unavailable for audience, particularly in the US. 'It had disappeared for some complicated reasons,' Anderson said.
I have come only to watch the restored version of Aranyer Din Ratri: Sharmila Tagore
Tagore recalled her memories of the shoot, and said, 'I have come only to watch the restored version of Aranyer Din Ratri .
The film is now 55 years old, and I feel like it was only the other day when we shot the film in the middle of the forest in this month of May. It was very hot, and we didn't have any amenities. We had no AC, we stayed in make-shift houses, and it was so hot that we would only shoot from 5.30am to 9am and again from 3pm to 6pm.
The rest of the time was just adda – it's a Bengali word which is like bonding and making friends. All of us became excellent friends.'
She continued, 'Manik da , as we called him (Ray), operated the camera himself in this film (the cinematographer of the film was Soumendu Roy). The memory game sequence, especially, was such a complicated operation – while the camera was on the trolley, he was panning from one face to the other and it was totally flawless because we were really poor and we could not shoot more than a couple of shots because we didn't have the film or the money (to buy film).
He was just terrific, and all those people became very, very close friends on the set.'
Tagore added, 'Simi and I are the only survivors, everybody else has passed on, so I'll see my old friends on the screen and relive those moments.' I had a friendship with Mr. Ray that continued till the end. I have a pile of his letters, which are so precious to me now...Films fade, as do memories. But Wes Anderson, Martin Scorsese, and our own Shivi have ensured that classics will not be forgotten. You have not only restored Ray's masterpiece, but you've made it immortal –Simi Garewal
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Mint
4 days ago
- Mint
An exhibition spotlights Nemai Ghosh, Satyajit Ray's ‘photo-biographer'
The study in the Bishop Lefroy Road apartment grew in proportion over the years with the stature of its occupant. For generations of Bengalis, Satyajit Ray's study at his residence in Kolkata was a compelling idea, for here sat the director, in a low chair, thinking, reading, talking, scripting, drawing storyboards, costumes or sets, composing music: visualising the films that would transform Indian cinema. Ray in his study—and outside it, filming—was photographed ceaselessly for 25 years by Nemai Ghosh, called Ray's 'photo-biographer" by Henri Cartier-Bresson. A selection of 150 of these photographs are now on display at the Alipore Museum, Kolkata. The exhibition, titled Light and Shadow: Satyajit Ray Through Nemai Ghosh's Lens, organised by DAG, opened on July 18 and will run till September 13. DAG has the largest collection of Ghosh's photographs. 'This must be one of the largest such collections of a single photographer in India," says Ashish Anand, CEO and managing director, DAG. Ghosh, shadowing Ray always, captures him outdoors with the same intensity: focused on the camera, or cupping his hands close to his eyes as frames, an image of concentration. This looks like meditation, as does Ray's stillness in his study. Thought is also action, and action, the continuation of thought. Ghosh's lens captures this internal process and gives it a form, as it does to the outward process of filming. The photographs of Ray are portraits of an artist at work. And what a figure he is: tall, with arresting features and a towering personality, a 'giant of cinema" according to Cartier-Bresson —set against the chaos of life, yet always distinct, in command. A telling image has Ray asking the crowd at a Varanasi ghat to clear the space during the shooting of Joi Baba Felunath. His stretched left arm seems to have silenced the crowd. But portraying a 'giant" such as Ray can be a tricky business, as is curating an exhibition from a vast body of work shot on film. 'Nemaida used film for his shoots and abstained from the use of flash. This made the task even more difficult because there were variations of each frame that differed in both sharpness and mood," says Anand. Ray's stature presented another problem. 'He was a towering personality but we didn't want that to overpower the image selection…(we needed to show) the filmmaker in a way that would be a homage without being hagiographic," Anand adds. The line between the two can be thin. Ghosh's own words on his subject are revealing. He was a Ray devotee. Ray himself had called Ghosh his 'Boswell", after the celebrated biographer of the English writer Samuel Johnson. But Ghosh out-Boswells Boswell in self-effacement and humility. Ray, the 'master", Ghosh would say, was everything for him. 'As the moon is illuminated by the light of the sun, very many people have come into the light because of Ray. It was my good luck that one day my stars shone on me too. Whatever inspiration and education I have received in my life are like pebbles I have collected from the shores of the sea called Satyajit Ray," writes Ghosh in the preface to Satyajit Ray: A Vision of Cinema, a book with his photographs of Ray. Unadulterated adulation from an audience is one thing, but for an artist, a photographer, the clouding of vision is dangerous. Fortunately, Ghosh seems to look at words and images differently. He was a master of photography, which chose him as much as he chose it. In the 1960s, when Ghosh was a stage actor working in Utpal Dutt's group in Kolkata, he was gifted a camera left behind in a taxi, 'a fixed-lens QL 17 Canonet". With this camera, but without any knowledge of photography, in 1968, Ghosh visited the shooting location of Ray's film Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne at Rampurhat in West Bengal, about 200km from Kolkata. Seeing Ray rehearse, Ghosh began to click away. 'I just used my intuition. I didn't know much about the camera, about the aperture or other features," he says in an interview. When Ray saw the photographs, he told Ghosh: 'Sir, you stole my angles!" Appointed the still photographer on Ray's sets, Ghosh took photographs of Ray and his work from Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne to Ray's last film, Agantuk. Ghosh was a natural. For him the moment, the light and the drama had to come together. Not for nothing was he from theatre. He shot only with an analogue camera, with a Nikon. 'My father took candid shots," says photographer Satyaki Ghosh, Nemai's son. Ghosh's subjects are hardly ever looking at the camera. Later, Ghosh learnt about the use of light from the stalwart lighting designer Tapas Sen. Most of Ghosh's photographs are in black and white—and they are his best work. They have a depth, a lyrical quality and a humanity that resonate with Ray's films. Ghosh did not shy away from colour, either, and there are a few gems in those too, such as Amjad Khan as Walid Ali Shah in Shatranj Ke Khiladi looking through the loops of the hookah coils with a lit cigarette in his hand. 'Out of 150 works in this show, around 65 coloured works are being showcased for the first time and the rest are black and white, which we have shown earlier," says Anand. Satyaki is upset that newer images from the mammoth collection are not being shown. Besides, he says, Nemai worked with several other subjects, from stalwarts of Bengali theatre like Sombhu Mitra and Utpal Dutt to artists such as Ramkinkar Baij, Benode Behari Mukherjee, Paritosh Sen, M.F. Hussain, K.G. Subramanyan, Anjolie Ela Menon and Jogen Chowdhury. After Ray's death in 1992, Ghosh began to photograph tribal communities, visiting remote corners of Kutch in Gujarat, Dantewada, now in Chhattisgarh, Koraput in Odisha and Ziro in Arunachal Pradesh. Perhaps one day we will see these in an exhibition. Meanwhile, at the Alipore Museum, we have remarkable portraits in colour of Smita Patil and Amjad Khan. A delightful black and white image shows Sharmila Tagore at a Kolkata beauty parlour, her hair in curlers, her face bright and amused. She is reflected in a mirror that also shows Ghosh taking the picture—a rare glimpse of the photographer. Chandrima S. Bhattacharya is journalist based in Kolkata.
Time of India
6 days ago
- Time of India
Italy honours Film Heritage Foundation Director Shivendra Singh Dungarpur with the prestigious Vittorio Boarini award
This prestigious award recognizes Dungarpur's extraordinary dedication to the cause of film preservation and restoration, and his pivotal role in building a movement to save film heritage across India and the subcontinent. Almost 10-15 years ago, when film restoration experts in India first began sounding the alarm that 75% of early Indian cinema had vanished due to neglect, decay, and indifference, the revelation was both staggering and sobering. The loss seemed irreversible. But this month, at Il Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna, Italy, one of the most tireless champions of India's cinematic legacy received a powerful global endorsement. National Award-winning filmmaker, archivist and Director of Film Heritage Foundation, Shivendra Singh Dungarpur , was conferred with the esteemed Vittorio Boarini Award at a special ceremony recently, during the Il Cinema Ritrovato Festival in Bologna, Italy by Gian Luca Farinelli, Director of the Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna. This prestigious award recognizes Dungarpur's extraordinary dedication to the cause of film preservation and restoration, and his pivotal role in building a movement to save film heritage across India and the subcontinent. Andrea Anastasio, director of the Italian Institute of Delhi says," The award is a very prestigious acknowledgement of Shivendra and Teesha's work. When Shivendra stated that 75% of early Indian cinema is lost due to neglect and absence of conservation, it was clear that unless someone started the process, future Indian generations would not have been able to know their heritage.' by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Dementia and Memory Loss Has Been Linked To This Common Thing. Memory Health Learn More Undo Italy has honoured Shivendra Singh Dungarpur and Teesha Cherian of the Film Heritage Foundation. Italy, through Bologna's Cineteca di Bologna and the festival Il Cinema Ritrovato, has emerged as a key international partner in India's cinematic salvage mission. Many of the restored Indian classics that have travelled to global film festivals - Ishanou, Aranyer Din Ratri etc have been brought back to life with Italy's technical support and curatorial platform. Shivendra Singh Dungarpur states, "I am deeply honoured to be the recipient of the Vittorio Boarini Award which is a recognition of my work in film preservation under the aegis of Film Heritage Foundation that I founded in 2014. It has been a very challenging undertaking to work towards saving endangered film heritage in our part of the world with limited resources and support over a decade. 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The Vittorio Boarini Award, instituted in 2022 by the Cinetecadi Bologna as part of its annual Il Cinema Ritrovato festival, is an international recognition honoring individuals or institutions who have made exceptional contributions to the preservation, restoration, promotion or dissemination of cinema as cultural heritage. It is named in tribute to Vittorio Boarini (1938–2021), the visionary founder and first director of the Cineteca di Bologna, whose efforts were instrumental in transforming it into one of the world's foremost film archives. The award celebrates a lifelong commitment to cinema preservation, international advocacy for film heritage, leadership in archive building and programming and work that bridges archival and public access to classic and rare films.
News18
6 days ago
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‘Makes Me Sick': US Woman Slams Influencer For Secretly Filming Her With Smartglasses
Last Updated: US woman shares her experience of being secretly filmed by Ray-Bean smartglasses in a supermarket. Her story on Twitch and X led to backlash and video removal. Imagine going out with someone and later finding out that you were being recorded without your consent the entire time. That's not a film script but a harsh reality that has become alarming with smart glasses equipped with hidden cameras. These futuristic gadgets, usually meant for content creation or a hands-free capturing experience, are now being misused to secretly record people in public. The worst part? Most of these glasses look like regular ones, making it almost impossible to spot one. What Exactly Happened? Recently, a US woman recounted her harrowing experience of being filmed without her knowledge by Ray-Bean smartglasses by an influencer who later uploaded the video on social media platforms. The woman, a user of the live-streaming app Twitch, dropped a post on X, sharing how the man approached her at a supermarket with illegal intentions. He first complimented her appearance before revealing that he couldn't speak English, before engaged in a brief conversation with her. Soon, the woman found out that her encounter with the stranger was all over the internet. 'THIS is why these glasses or any version should NOT exist. I VIVIDLY remember this interaction; I had no idea I was being filmed. This was to be sent to me tonight after I was recognised. This is disturbing. Makes me sick physically, this is violating and WRONG," wrote the Twitch streamer. She added that although LED lights glow up when a person is recording a video through the smart glasses, she failed to spot them. Here's What The Influencer Said The influencer later shared a video on social media, admitting that he often breaks the rules to get more clicks and views on his content. The woman replied to his clip, stating, 'He faked not speaking fluent English to make me uncomfortable for a reaction. He followed me around and edited it all out so it looked like he walked away. He posted a video admitting that he does this on purpose for views and income." He faked not speaking fluent English to make me uncomfortable for a followed me around and edited it all out so it looked like he walked away. He posted a video admitting that he does this on purpose for views and income. I was and am not over reacting. — Herculyse (@herculysee) July 26, 2025 Although the woman lodged a complaint with Instagram for the authorities to take down the video, the Metra platform refused. But thanks to the controversy, the influencer was forced to delete the clip after significant backlash from online critics. First Published: July 28, 2025, 13:08 IST Disclaimer: Comments reflect users' views, not News18's. Please keep discussions respectful and constructive. Abusive, defamatory, or illegal comments will be removed. News18 may disable any comment at its discretion. By posting, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
