Kolkata Film Festival organizes photographic exhibition by Satyajit Ray

Kolkata, Nov 14 (Calcutta Tube / IBNS) The 17th Kolkata Film Festival has organized a  photographic exhibition comprised of B & W pictures clicked by filmmaker Satyajit Ray himself over his sojourns in India and abroad roughly between 1957 and 1969.

The show is on at the Gangendra Hall in the Nandan film complex. The geographic horizons of the exhibition span cities ranging from Vienna through Berlin, Venice, Rome, London, Los Angeles, New York, different cities in East Germany, Japan  and Tehran.

Within India, the photographs reflect his travels into Darjeeling and Rajasthan probably when he was scouting locations for Kanchenjungha and Sonar Kella respectively.

Puri also finds place in two photographs.The choice of location, arrangement of time of day to suit his lighting requirements and choice of subject offer a different insight into the creative talents of one of the best ten directors of the world as mapped by an old issue of TIME magazine.

There is a 1960 photograph taken in Vienna against the local backdrop fore grounded with an interesting cinema poster featuring Gary Cooper in a film called Bengali.

Akira Kurosawa and Steve McQueen feature in some photographs.

But the hallmark of this exhibition is defined by three outstanding portraits of Uttam Kumar taken in Rome in 1966 probably when they went for the screening of Nayak.

Complete Gallery

– Shoma A. Chatterji
(Images in colour by Avishek Mitra)