This extraordinary fiction, mystery and science writer, artist and translator is best known in India and abroad as a filmaker and director par excellence. Indeed, Bengali cinema is synonymous with the name of Satyajit Ray. Although in India his cinema was largely limited to a Bengali audience, he remains one of the most respected names in Indian cinema.

After studying painting at Shantiniketan, Satyajit Ray began his professional career as a visualizer in an advertising firm in Calcutta. His interest in films led to his founding th Calcutta Film Society in 1947. By this time he had already completed an illustrated edition of Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhya's novel, Pather Panchali, and developed a passion for writing scenarios of prospective films. What started as a hobby became a lifetime's occupation. He started making cinema with the conviction that it was possible to make realistic cinema with an almost entirely amateur cast. Pather Panchali, made on a small budget with new faces both in the cast and the crew and nearly all of it shot outdoors, began a new era in Indian cinema.
The film immediately brought him fame at home and abroad, and laid the foundations for a long and brilliant career. Ray's career of forty years in cinema was interrupted by increasingly fragile health in the mid-1980s. In 1989 he was back behind the camera, to produce the first of a series of three films (Ganashatru, Shakha Proshakha, Agantuk ), which were to be his last and in which critics found a marked departure from his earlier world view.

Throughout his career, Ray continued to receive awards, both from his own people and from the international community. His accolades culminated in an Oscar for Lifetime Achievement from the American Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences. The Indian government followed with the Bharat Ratna.
Ray's classic films like Aparajito from the Apu Trilogy, probed the depths of universal relationship, and invested the everyday with the depths and layers that they reveal to the sensitive observer.
In West Bengal, Ray is also loved as the creator of Feluda, the master detective, who travels thoughout India with his assistant Topshe and the inimitable Jatayu. In addition, Ray was one of the few Bengali writers to experiment in a science fiction and fantasy -- a genre that is still fairly esoteric in India.

HIS FILMS

1955 Pather Panchali 1956 Aparajito 1957 Parash Pathar 1958 Jalsaghar 1959 Apur Sansar 1960 Devi 1961 Rabindranath Tagore 1961 Teen Kanya 1962 Kanchenjungha 1962 Abhijan 1963 Mahanagar 1964 Charulata 1964 Two 1965 Kapurush-O-Mahapurush 1966 Nayak 1967 Chiriakhana 1968 Goopy Gyn Bagha Byne 1969 Aranyer Din Ratri 1970 Pratidwandi 1971 Sikkim 1972 The Inner Eye 1973 Ashani Sanket 1974 Sonar Kella 1975 Jana Aranya 1976 Bala 1977 Shatranj Ke Khilari 1978 Joi Baba Felunath 1980 Pikoo 1980 Hirak Rajar Deshe 1981 Sadgati 1984 Ghare Baire 1987 Sukumar Ray 1989 Ganashatru 1990 Shakha Proshakha 1991 Agantuk

Books by Satyajit Ray (in translation) Our Films, Their Films/Paperback

My Years with Apu

The Chess Players and Other Screen PlaysSatyajit Ray and Andrew Robinson (editor)

Nonsense Rhymes Sukumar Ray, Satyajit Ray
(Writers Workshop SaffronBird Ser.)

Phatik Chand

The Adventures of FeludaTranslated by Chitrita Banerjee

The Mystery of the Elephant God : More Adventures of Pheluda

The Unicorn Expedition, and Other Fantastic Tales of India

Bravo Professor Shonku

Feluda's Last Case

Twenty Stories