Even as the Nationwide lockdown has got extended further with some relaxations, the home-stuck cerebral-oriented have some interesting movie-viewing coming up from May 2, as the Films Division has lined up ‘Masterstrokes’, a special online festival of films by or on Satyajit Ray.
Incidentally, Ray’s 100th birthday falls on this day, marking the start of his centenary celebrations. He was born on May 2, 1921.
Some of the films being lined up in the online festival are not easily accessible, and thus would be a treat to the eyes of the connoiseurs. All the films as part of the festival would be screened via the ‘Documentary of the Week’ section on the website of the Films Division (www.filmsdivision.org), which is a wing under the Ministry of Inforamtion and Broadcasting. In additon, viewers can also log onto the YouTube channel of Films Division to access the films.
According to the schedule drawn up, the festival will kick off with the screening of ‘Inner Eye’, a documentary made for the Films Division by Ray on acclaimed painter Benode Behari Mukherjee, followed by the telefilm ‘Sadgati’ based on a short story by Munshi Premchand and starring Om Puri, Smita Patil and Mohan Agashe.
On May 3, the festival will screen the documentary on Ray which was made by noted film historian and documentarian B D Garga as part of the series ‘Creative Artists of India’, and ‘Rabindranath Tagore’, a documentary on the Nobel Laureate made by Ray.
The May 4 schedule includes ‘Bala’, a documentary directed by Ray on famed Bharatnatyam dancer T Balasaraswati and produced by the National Centre for Performing Arts and the Government of Tamil Nadu, and the mesmerising but less-seen short film ‘Two’, made for the PBS network of the United States.
The next two days will feature two acclaimed documentaries on Ray, ‘Ray’ directed by Goutam Ghose and ‘Satyajit Ray’ directed by Shyam Benegal, respectively.
