Satyajit Ray

Award-winning director Satyajit Ray doesn't appear anywhere in the Blue Book. For that matter, neither does any South Asian filmmaker, despite the support of critics worldwide and the 400-member Yale South Asian Society (SAS). To Rahul Rajkumar,
SY '99, former SAS president, it's very simple. There is a vacuum when it comes to South Asian intellectual activities at Yale. An ongoing Ray retrospective, which constitutes this semester's South Asian Film Series, aims both to begin to fill the void and to present the works of a great director to an interested audience.

"Ray's work is extremely photographic and in general very realistic," said Karna Basu, SY '02, one of the series' organizers. "He finds tragedy in the mundane, rathaer than in the spectacular--in the natural background noises, the urban street, and the middle-class family." Ray was chosen partly for his reputation in the West, reflected by a 1992 Oscar for lifetime achievement in cinema. But, organizer Saema Somalya, CC '99, says, his movies also offer "compelling portraits of life in South Asia," exposing the culture to the diverse audience the series hopes to attract.

In order to open this window to South Asian culture, the Ray retrospective is focusing on Ray's realistic Calcutta films, as opposed to what Basu terms Ray's "fairy tale movies." Fri., Mar. 26, at 7 p.m. in WLH 119, the series is screening Mahanagar (The Big City), a 1963 film about the societal and gender conflicts that arise when a family's economic hardship forces the wife to get a job. Later films include Jana Aranya on Fri., Apr. 9, and Agantuk on Tues., Apr. 27. It's not only the subject matter that makes Ray's movies so evocative of urban Indian life. As Basu noted, Ray's films have "a lot of scratches and not the best contrast control," offering grit reminiscent of Italian neo-realism.

The series' screening of Apur Sansar, from the acclaimed World of Apu trilogy, attracted over 100 students. "Most of the people were from the general community at Yale," Political Science Professor Arun Agrawal said. "We see the series as an inclusive effort."

The organizers hope that the series' popularity will lead to increased funding in coming years. With this money, Somalya hopes to get "more courageous as we start to get less-well-known filmmakers," and Agrawal envisions a thematic series, with a possible focus on "Women and Society in South Asia" next semester. But, he says,"whether we are able to make the series more frequent than once a month and invite speakers to talk about the film will depend on how much money we are able to raise." The group hopes to feature other Bengali films and even the Hollywood-modeled "Bollywood" movies, which attract droves of urban Indians with over-the-top dance sequences in which scantily clad heroines lip-sync pop songs to fashionably dressed heroes. Basu adds that "when we turn to modern Indian movies, we will inevitably be showing the work of some expatriates."

Ultimately though, the series is only part of a larger effort to

increase campus awareness of South Asian issues. The series should "mark 50 years of Indian independence as a democracy by deploying one of the most visible cultural products of India--the Indian movie," Agrawal said.

The series' popularity will "provide evidence to the Administration of interest in South Asian Studies," Somalya added. "What I envision is the institution of more permanent classes on South Asia." According to Agrawal, Yale's excuse for not offering courses is a lack of resources, "but this reason seems increasingly historical. A school like Yale could transform the state of South Asian studies within two years." Until then, Yalies can experience the culture through independent endeavors like the Ray retrospective.

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