Veteran filmmaker Shyam Benegal, who recently inaugurated the Satyajit Ray’s Gallery at the National Museum of Indian Cinema (NMIC) in Mumbai, as part of the filmmaker’s 101st birth anniversary celebrations – talks about what makes Ray iconic, an original and a marker for Indian cinema (“Everything is either before or after Ray”).

Ray’s Pather Panchali had its world premiere at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York as far back as 1955. And according to Benegal, it was Ray who put Indian cinema on the world map. He explains, “Ray is that one Indian filmmaker whom everybody knows. In fact, there is no country in the world where they don’t know who Satyajit Ray was. If you go to a West African country – Niger in Nigeria, for example – and utter the words ‘Satyajit Ray’, they will know him. Everybody recognized Indian cinema because of Ray.”

Talking about Ray’s reputation as one of the most original filmmakers, Benegal says, “Indian cinema was developing in a particular way when Satyajit Ray came on to the scene, and then there was a great amount of transformation. And therefore, he is a marker — there’s before Satyajit Ray and after Satyajit Ray.”

He adds, “If it wasn’t for Ray, we would not have had an Film and Television Institute of India (FTII). It started because of him. The whole idea was that filmmaking is not just about moving pictures — people singing and dancing and speaking dialogues. It’s an art form of its own. He not only made the audience and filmmakers conscious of the fact that cinema is an art, but also the government.”

The NMIC — in association with the National Council of Science Museums (NCSM), Kolkata — has created a gallery on Ray, with a life-size statue of Ray set up at the NMIC. Here, visitors can interactively explore Ray’s filmography and get a glimpse of many of his films’ scenes. Says Benegal, “I find the gallery wonderful because it is very well-curated. The design gives an idea of what kind of filmmaker Ray was. He was not just a filmmaker, but a multi-faceted genius. He used to design his film’s posters, titles, and even storyboards. I don’t think we’ve had anybody quite like Satyajit Ray since his time – before or after.”

Despite the global accolades garnered by Ray, Benegal says that the Mumbai film industry continued to consider Ray as a regional filmmaker. He said, “Unke uss zamane mein bahut grudge hoti thi. Mumbai film industry used to feel – ‘Woh toh regional filmmaker hai. Hindi mein film nahi banata hai’. That’s why he made Shatranj Ke Khiladi. They used to say – ‘Woh toh sirf Bangla mein film banata hai, how can he be considered an Indian filmmaker?’ Iss kism ke debates hote thay.”

This month, a three-day Satyajit Ray Film Festival was organized in Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Kolkata, Bengaluru, and Pune, in honour of the filmmaker, from May 2-4. In Mumbai, the opening film was Aparajito, about which Shyam Benegal says, “This is a film which is, again, underrated in its style. After Pather Panchali, when Aparajito came out in 1956,everybody felt that it didn’t match up to the original. But the funny part of this is that Aparajito is a very fine film. The Banaras sequence in it is just outstanding, and the way he used the city in Aparajito is very unique.”