Friday, April 13, 2007

"Rabindranath Tagore" by Satyajit Ray



"On the 7th of August, 1941, in the city of Calcutta, a man died. His mortal remains perished. But he left behind him a heritage, which no fire could consume. It is a heritage of words, and music, and poetry, of ideas, and of ideals. And it has the power to move us, to inspire us, today, and in the days to come."

Thanks to a visit by Holden Caulfield, I was delighted to discover the documentary on Rabindranath Tagore by Satyajit Ray available on YouTube. I have been wanting to see this for years.

In 1961, on the insistence of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, Ray was commissioned to make a documentary on Rabindranath Tagore, on the occasion of the poet's birth centennial, a tribute to the person who probably influenced Ray most. Due to limited real footage of Tagore available, Ray faced the challenge of making a film out of mainly static material, and he remarked that it took as much work as three feature films.

The script, commentary and direction are by Satyajit Ray. Ray had observed that “Ten or twelve minutes of it are among the most moving and powerful things that I have produced”.

2 comments:

B.B.Mandal said...

Dear Rama, I dont have a copy of the documentary on Tagore by Ray. I could not download from your blog. I failed to do the same from YouTube either. I saw it long before at Ghatsila when I was an organiser of Mosaboni Film Society. I would like to download and see with my family. Please help.BBMandal,Nagpur.

Anonymous said...

Thank you friends. Mr Mandal, I don't think this can be downloaded from my blog or YouTube, though you can watch it from both sites. The YouTube link is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXcctmcHZlU&eurl=

You need a broadband connection, and it takes a few minutes to load, after that it plays smoothly.

The same YouTube link has a no. of other Ray films too.