Showing posts with label Apur Sansar. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Apur Sansar. Show all posts
Tiger Pataudi and I were completely unaware of Hindu Muslim issues in Bombay when we got married-Sharmila Tagore
8:37 AM
Niharika Lal (BOMBAY TIMES; April 13, 2023)
Veteran actress Sharmila Tagore was recently in Delhi for a session titled Breaking The Boundaries: An Accidental Actor To An Idol. At the event, the actress shared why she consciously decided to do more meaningful roles after An Evening In Paris (1967), and chose films like Aradhana (1969), Amar Prem (1972), Avishkaar (1974) — which are still considered outstanding. The session was held on the sidelines of the 8th National Leadership Conclave & All India Management Association’s (AIMA) 13th Managing India Awards.
‘REALISED THAT A GLAM IMAGE IS ALL VERY GOOD, BUT TO BE TAKEN SERIOUSLY, I HAVE TO BE MORE THAN THAT’
Talking about the reaction that her bikini scene in An Evening In Paris (1967) got, Sharmila Tagore said, “When I did An Evening In Paris, my bikini scene was shocking. The public, including the industry, was quite surprised. I believe there were questions asked in Parliament at that time.”
The actress added, “Although it looks very innocent now, compared to the kind of films we see today.”
“I remember there was a poster of the film on the road (near her home), and my mother-in-law was coming to town, so I got my driver to take down that poster in the middle of the night – not realizing that there might be other posters on the way from the airport,” Tagore said.
After the film’s release, Tagore said that she realized that “a glamorous image is all very good, but if I want to be taken seriously, then I have to be more than that. Fortunately, Aradhana (1969) arrived at that time, which I signed. From then on, I was consciously choosing my script. After Aradhana, there was Amar Prem (1972), Avishkar (1974), Mausam (1975), Namkeen (1982) and many other films that spoke to me. These films have stayed on. I managed to take myself beyond glamour. Glamour is not forever. You are very attractive, and the world goes crazy about you, but after a while, somebody else will take that place.”
‘SCRIPT IS PARAMOUNT’
With her recent film Gulmohar (2023), Tagore returned to acting after a gap of over a decade. Talking about how the film industry has become more structured over the years, she said, “The honest truth is that the script is paramount. The industry has come a long way. There’s so much that has improved in the industry, and you’ll be surprised to know that when we started we didn’t even have a script. Somebody would give us a narrative and tell us what the story is about, and then we would take it from there. The money was also not in place, except for Raj Kapoor, Shantaram, B R Chopra, and a few others. Movies took a long time to make, and we also didn’t have as many theatres. A film of Dilip Kumar, Raj Kapoor, or Dev Anand would get released in all theatres, while a film like Anupama (1966) would not even get a release date for a long time. Everything was quite different.”
‘ARADHANA RUNNING IN THEATRES FOR 50 WEEKS PROVED THAT EMOTIONS TRANSCEND LANGUAGE’
Recalling the anti-Hindi agitation in Chennai around the time when Aradhana was released in 1969, Tagore said, “When Aradhana was released, there was a huge protest in Chennai against Hindi. At that time, there was kind of a Hindi boycott ongoing. Yet, Aradhana ran for 50 weeks in theatres. It was the RRR of our time.”
Sharmila added, “It just shows that emotions transcend language. Our films, irrespective of the region they come from, make people laugh and cry. Therefore, our commonalities far exceed our differences.”
‘AT THE AGE OF 13, I HAD NO IDEA WHO SATYAJIT RAY WAS OR HOW FAMOUS HE WAS’
Sharmila Tagore started her career with Satyajit Ray’s 1959 film Apur Sansar. Talking about how she didn’t realise how fortunate she was, she said, “When Satyajit Ray introduced me to cinema at the age of 13, I don’t think I quite appreciated that. It was obviously something that was accidental. The fact is that I did that film, and I did get noticed by the world. It opened so many doors for me. But at the age of 13, I had no idea who Satyajit Ray was or how famous he was.”
‘WE WERE COMPLETELY UNAWARE OF HINDU-MUSLIM ISSUES IN BOMBAY WHEN WE GOT MARRIED’
Sharmila Tagore married Tiger Pataudi (Mansoor Ali Khan Pataudi) in 1968. In response to a question on the cultural differences between her family and the Pataudi family, she said that there was no cultural difference because she also belonged to a big family, adding, “When you are talking about Hindu-Muslim issue, in Mumbai, we were completely unaware of it. We just announced it to our respective parents and then it was their problem to sort it out. In Bengal, my parents were getting notes (threats) and similar things were happening here (in Mumbai). So much so, that one morning, I was told that some officials from Delhi have come to see me. They told me ‘You need protection and we have come to protect you.’ I said, ‘I think I’m all right and I don’t feel threatened in Mumbai.’ And it was true. The wedding went on peacefully and all went well. The perception was that there would be some kind of problem but thank God it didn’t happen.”
The making of Satyajit Ray and the birth of Indian global cinema
7:49 AM
His first film, Pather Panchali, took Indian cinema to a different league and there was no looking back after that. The legend that was Satyajit Ray can perhaps best be understood if one considers the different influences on his life, from Tagore to his illustrious family
Suman Ghosh (THE TIMES OF INDIA; December 5, 2021)
When Satyajit Ray was a little boy, his mother took him to meet Rabindranath Tagore at his abode in Santiniketan. Ray wanted Tagore to inscribe a poem in his notebook. Tagore obliged and wrote this:
Many miles I have roamed, over many a day
From this land to that, ready for the price to pay
Mountain ranges and oceans too, lay in my way
Yet two steps from my door, with wide open eyes,
I did not see the dewdrop, on a single sheaf of rice
After handing this over to the boy, he told his mother: “Let him keep this, and when he is a little older, he will understand this.” Later in life, the boy shook the film world by portraying the story of a small village in Bengal called Nishchindipur in Pather Panchali. He did focus on a “dewdrop” close to his homeland and was able to emanate an effect that inspired generations of filmmakers all over the world, from Martin Scorsese to Abbas Kiarostami, and put Indian cinema on the world map.
The reason I mention the Tagore poem is that it summarises Ray’s philosophy of life and his films. Though very local in nature, his films managed to strike a universal chord, hence were global in reach. Reflecting on the oeuvre of Ray, almost 65 years after the above incident, another Santiniketan protégée, Amartya Sen, delivering the Ray Memorial lecture in 1995 had this to say: “The great filmmaker’s eagerness to seek the larger unit (ultimately his ability to talk to the whole world) combined well with his enthusiasm for understanding the smallest of the small: the individuality of each person.”
Tagore’s influence on the Ray family was since the times of Upendrakishore Roy Chowdhury — Satyajit Ray’s grandfather — who was a writer, painter, singer and a pioneer of the Bengali printing industry. Tagore was an enthusiastic advocate of Upendrakishore’s writing, encouraging him to translate and adapt stories from abroad as well as from Indian legends, but as a frequent visitor to their house, Tagore came to regard Sukumar Ray, Satyajit Ray’s father, as one of his favourite young friends.
Sukumar Ray was a genius himself who excelled in many fields. He graduated with double honours in physics and chemistry from the esteemed Presidency College and also started the Nonsense Club around that time. His nonsense rhymes are folklore in Bengal, reminiscent of Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear. He was an adept photographer, and in 1922, he became the second Indian to be made a Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society. Thus, the influence of both his grandfather, whom he had not seen, and his father who passed away when he was not even three, was evident in Satyajit Ray.
But I also want to emphasise the influence of women in Ray’s life at a younger age, since the portrayal of well-etched women characters — Karuna Banerjee in Aparajito, Madhabi Mukherjee in Charulata, Kapurush and Mahanagar, Sharmila Tagore in Apur Sansar, Devi and Aranyer Din Ratri, to name a few — formed a strong element in his films.
Kadambini Ganguly, who was the first woman physician of India, was one of Ray’s ancestors. It was Kadambini who delivered Ray and although he never knew her (she died when he was only two), he felt her influence through the profound effect she had on all the Ray women, including his mother, Suprabha Ray, who was a very strong and dignified lady. After the untimely death of her husband, she moved to her brother’s house at Bhowanipore with her three-year-old son. As a young widow, she travelled every day by bus during the 1930s and 40s from south to north Calcutta, where she worked as superintendent of the handicraft department at Vidyasagar Bani Bhawan. This reminds one of Madhabi Mukherjee’s character of a working woman in Ray’s Mahanagar.
Ray’s mother was excellent in knitting and stitching, and an excellent sculptor too, whose engraving of Gautam Buddha still finds a place at his Bishop Lefroy Road home (in Calcutta). It was his mother who brought him up, taught him, looked after him, cared for him, and communicated the family’s creative and literary legacy. In fact it was his mother who convinced him to spend time at Santiniketan in the proximity of Tagore at a formative stage in his life. There, he learnt art from the great Nandalal Bose.
In Ray’s Aparajito, world cinema witnessed one of the most endearing mother-son relationships ever seen on celluloid. One wonders how much of it was autobiographical, though the source material is from Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay’s classic.
If one delves into his earliest awareness of cinema, one must date back to his grandfather’s printing press. The printing press in Apur Sansar comes to mind reading about those stories from his childhood. In the block-making section of the printing press there was a huge imported process camera whose operator Ramdohin became his friend. One imagines little Toto in Giuseppe Tornatore’s 1988 masterpiece Cinema Paradiso in such a setting, where the projectionist Alfredo instills a deep love of films in the boy. But the story in his memoirs, which I find extremely cinematic, was a bit later in life at his uncles’ house. At noon when summer rays of the bright sun got in through a chink in the shutters of the bedroom, Ray would lie there alone for hours watching the “free bioscope” created on the wall: a large inverted image of the traffic outside.
Magic lanterns were popular toys in Bengali homes around that period. It was a box with a tube at the front containing a lens, a chimney on top and a handle on the right-hand side. The film ran on two reels with a kerosene lamp for light source. Ray himself suspected that his first inklings of a fascination with cinema started from those images. Ingmar Bergman, another giant of world cinema, also had a similar inspiration through magic lanterns in childhood and subsequently named his autobiography ‘The Magic Lantern’.
A little later in life, Ray infused himself with influences from music, painting, drama, and a host of other art forms which contributed to the artist that he was. His subsequent journey of getting addicted to films and his struggle to make Pather Panchali are quite well documented. His films gathered accolades all over the world and put Indian films firmly in the firmament of cinema history.
I find it quite intriguing that although Ray had straddled disparate subjects in his films, he never ventured out of a classical storytelling style – an orderly unfolding of events with a beginning, a middle and an end; a firm rein applied to emotion, and an avoidance of disorientation.
He never experimented with form and structure in his films, unlike Mrinal Sen or Mani Kaul in the Indian filmmaking context. The famous ghost dance in Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne was the closest foray Ray made into cinematic experimentation. Was it mainly because the films which prompted his interest in filmmaking were of the classical Hollywood tradition — the films of John Ford, Frank Capra or Billy Wilder — or that he was not brave enough to venture out of his comfort zone?
One might get an idea of his thought process from his own writings. He was an ardent admirer of the French New Wave of the 60s and singled out Godard as the thoroughgoing iconoclast. He wrote of how Godard changed basic cinema language in his films. But he was also aware that Godard’s cinema can be boiled down to a cinema of the head, not the heart, and therefore a cinema of the minority. Ray was extremely conscious of the “audience connect”.
So any experimentation with the syntax of film language would alienate the audience, and hence it was not a viable proposition for him. The stigma of esotericism always bothered him. According to him, “avant-gardism” is a luxury which we cannot yet afford in our country. That begs the question, given the strong analytical grasp which Ray had on the craft of cinema, would he have been a different type of filmmaker, experimenting with basic cinematic language at a much deeper level, if he had the luxury which French cinema afforded to the greats? These are counterfactual questions, but worth pondering.
Soumitra Chatterjee was known for his evening addas after shoots-Sharmila Tagore
8:11 AM
Sharmila Tagore remembers the Bengali screen stalwart as they both started their glorious journey in world cinema with Apur Sansar
Sharmila Tagore (MID-DAY; November 16, 2020)
I still vividly remember my first meeting with Soumitra during the shoot of Apur Sansar (1959). Since it was our first film, he asked me whether I was nervous, and I — a school girl then — retorted confidently, "Not in the least!" That was the ice-breaker. I believe Apur Sansar depicted young romance tenderly. In a scene, my character [Aparna] gets so involved while watching a mythological film that she bursts into tears. Soumitra's character [Apu] stops laughing on seeing how the scene has affected his wife. Manikda [Satyajit Ray] beautifully depicted the understanding between a husband and wife through that simple scene.
We went on to do many films together, and it was a joy to work with Soumitra every time. He was encouraging, and I learned so much from him. Every moment spent with him was an opportunity to learn. He was well-read, and didn't restrict himself to movies — he wrote and recited poetry, wrote plays and acted in them. A true artiste, he found joy in expressing himself through different creative forms. He was an inspiring figure as he had a positive mindset and refrained from being judgmental. He made the most of what life had to offer.
Soumitra wasn't a star like his contemporaries; he kept the actor in him alive. What I truly admired about him was that he would constantly work towards improving his skill. He was known for his addas in the evenings after the shoots. When we were filming Abar Aranye [2003] in north Bengal, we would gather every evening and listen to Soumitra and Subhendu Chatterjee as they discussed myriad topics. It was such a joy to hear somebody so well-read and erudite. I wish I had recorded those conversations!
As told to Upala KBR
Debutant Soumitra Chatterjee who found ‘half of himself’ in Apu grew into Satyajit Ray’s ‘favourite actor’
7:57 AM
Satyajit Ray with Soumitra during the shooting of ‘Joi Baba Felunath’ in Varanasi. It was released in 1979
Priyanka Dasgupta (THE TIMES OF INDIA; November 16, 2020)
The camera slowly zooms in on a letter — it’s a recommendation that says Apu is a “sensitive, conscientious and diligent” person. It then pans to Apu’s face: a young man with sharp features and a beatific smile that lights up a classic black-and-white frame. This was Satyajit Ray’s introduction of the debutant Soumitra Chatterjee in Apur Sansar.
He was the hero everyone wanted to adore — a sensitive, intelligent young man with the spirit of a wanderer who yearns to discover a compassionate world, gets bruised repeatedly and loses his way when he reproaches his son for having caused his wife’s death. What he never forsakes is the purity of his soul.
Chatterjee had told Ray’s biographer Marie Seton in Portrait Of A Director that he found “half of himself” in Apu. The cinematic masterpiece wasn’t just a teaser for love and loss in matrimony. Chatterjee had said “plenty of young men” who watched his debut opposite Sharmila Tagore came to him and said they would like to get married. His conviction breathed life into this shot and achingly poignant tale. Apur Sansar influenced the thought process of generations and redefined Indian cinema. It also changed the trajectory of Chatterjee’s own life. “Playing Apu gave me a chance to grow into 'Ray’s favourite actor'. That epithet itself is something any actor would covet, I also got a lifetime friend in my co-star, Sharmila Tagore,” he said.
One day, Chatterjee had gone to watch the shooting of the Chhabi Biswas starrer Jalsaghar. As he was about to leave, Ray said: “Let me introduce you to Chhabi Biswas. You haven’t met him, have you?” In his customary baritone, he said: “Chhabida, this is Soumitra Chattopadhyay. He is playing Apu in my next film, Apur Sansar.” That was how Chatterjee learnt he had bagged the role that would define him.
After reading the screenplay, Chatterjee tried to innovate with the time-lapse portions, which is the gap between shots. Adopting the Stanislavskian method, he would imagine what Apu would do and write that down. Sometimes, he would include autobiographical elements. This was his way of getting under the skin of Apu’s character. While he had the courage to share these with Ray, the master inspired him to think further.
The result showed when Apur Sansar released on May 1, 1959. It went on to win the National Award for Best Feature Film that year. As per Seton, Chatterjee felt his portrayal of Apu to be the “image of the contemporary Indian man in the process of becoming modern”.As per director Goutam Ghose, this film also stood out for the discoveries of such great performances by the lead actors.
I used to see many Hindi films, but I was never keen on doing one-Soumitra Chatterjee
7:57 AM
On a visit to Mumbai, the legendary Soumitra Chatterjee, spoke about his experiences of working with Satyajit Ray, friendship with Shashi Kapoor and why he stayed away from Hindi movies
Sreeparna Sengupta (BOMBAY TIMES; April 24, 2019)
For Soumitra Chatterjee, whose prolific career spanning over six decades, saw him as the most enduring face of Oscar winning master filmmaker, Satyajit Ray’s movies, it is his immense work in field of theatre, that has found him in the city of Mumbai time and again. However, Hindi movies have never been a lure for this legendary Indian actor.Recently, a captive audience at the packed Nehru Center auditorium, soaked in the aura of the 86-year-old thespian at a cultural programme, organised by South Mumbai’s oldest Tagore music school. Later, over a more relaxed one-on-one conversation, he lets on, “Poetry has been very dear to me from an early age. That’s a legacy of my parents. It was my father who gave me the idea of doing poetry recitals. And my mother unconsciously sowed the plant for the love of poetry that I have.”
The actor’s love for theatre also developed at a very young age, much before the arc lights took over. In fact, it was theatre and the common love for world cinema that saw a friendship develop between late actor Shashi Kapoor and him, “Shashi was also into theatre from the very beginning. And although he had to bend and mend his ways for the Hindi film industry, he was always aware of what was happening in theatre and cinema around the world. Later, as a producer, Shashi produced some remarkable films.”
When probed on a black-and-white photograph of the two dapper actors in their hey days, which he had shared on social media, he says, “That was taken in Berlinale. We had become friends since the time we did films like, Charulata and Shakespeare Wallah. Both the films were shown in Berlin in 1965. So, the photograph that you are referring to was taken then. And as far as I remember, it was shot by none other than Satyajit Ray. Both of us were very young at that time and Shashi was the ever-handsome, charming and witty person,” adds the actor, who was no less a heartthrob of Bengali cinema then. Incidentally, both their films won top awards at the Berlin film festival, that year.
‘Balraj Sahni is the best that Indian cinema has seen’Given his association with the Hindi film industry, ask him why he has never been seen in a Hindi film, like some of his contemporaries — Suchitra Sen, Sharmila Tagore and Uttam Kumar, he says, “Frankly, I was not keen on doing Hindi films. For the single reason, that the kind of films I started liking were those of filmmakers like Vittorio De Sica, Federico Fellini or other new-age filmmakers that opened windows for the kind of films that I wanted to do. Although from an early age, I used to see many Hindi films. And actors like Dilip Kumar Saab and also, Raj Kapoor to an extent, were favourites of mine. But the more I think about an sub-conscious influence on me, only one name comes to my mind — Balraj Sahni. He is the best that Indian cinema has seen and I still adore him as my idol.”
‘I don’t know why Satyajit Ray liked me’
Introduced to cinema lovers the world over as Apu of Apur Sansar on May 1, 1959, he has vivid memories of his first day at shoot with Satyajit Ray (it was his 27th death anniversary on April 23). Reflecting on his first meeting with the maestro, he says, “I was initially taken for an interview with Mr. Ray when he was looking for someone to play Apu for the second part of the Apu trilogy. But I was too grown up and tall for the adolescent Apu. And I wasn’t selected. But much later, after I had been working with him for two-three years, I came to know that he had made up his mind to make the third part of the trilogy, after he saw me. Over time, as we collaborated more, we developed a rapport and he started giving me a lot of freedom into the way I wanted to do a role. It was exciting to shoot with him.” Pausing to reflect, his voice trails off with a shy questioning laugh, “...And I don’t know why he liked me.”
‘Ray used to draw sketches of the make-up and look before actually going into the shoot’
When the conversation steers to Charulata, his voice swells with pride, “That was a great film. Satyajit Ray always felt that was his most perfect film. In fact, as a student of Bengali Honours, I knew the original story, Noshto Nir extremely well. It was one of the greatest stories written by Tagore. Ray used to draw sketches of the make-up and look before actually going into the shoot. He did that for Charulata as well and sent me a table piano, long before the shooting started. I would practice on it as it was necessary to do that for shooting a song in the film,
‘Every conversation with Ray was a learning’
Chatterjee’s collaboration with Ray spanned across 14 films, including masterpieces like Aranyer Din Ratri, Devi, Ghare Baire, Ashani Sanket among others, showcasing the actor as one of the most versatile in Indian cinema.
“Every conversation with Ray was a learning. He was my mentor, a kind of teacher, but unobtrusively so. He always behaved like a friend, more like an elder friend. And even today he has remained an inspiration,” signs off the legend, who has worked with filmmakers like Mrinal Sen, Tapan Sinha, Goutam Ghose, Rituparno Ghosh. His most recent works include films like Shonar Pahar, Mayurakshi, Basu Poribar in which he was cast with Aparna Sen after 19 long years.
How Lee Kline managed to restore Apu Trilogy despite the reels being burnt
7:38 AM
Roshmila Bhattacharya (MUMBAI MIRROR; October 26, 2015)
One of the highlights of the
17th MAMI Mumbai Film Festival partnered by Mumbai Mirror is Satyajit
Ray's Apu Trilogy. Digitally restored prints of Pather Panchali (1955),
Aparajito (1956) and Apur Sansar (1959) will be screened at Jio MAMI
which opens on October 29.Quiz Lee Kline, the restorer who has presided over the technical group at The Criterion Collection for the last 20 years, on the biggest challenge he faced on this project, and he says it started with tracking down the original negatives. Eleven reels of Aparajito, nine reels of Pather Panchali and two reels of Apur Sansar were located in the vaults of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Los Angeles. “But because of a fire, parts of the negatives were warped from the heat and those were the hardest to restore,“ he reminisces.
The fire started in July 1993 at Hendersons Film Laboratories in South London and many of the Ray films which had just arrived from India en route to LA were badly burnt. Still, the negatives were shipped to the US and tucked away for two decades.
Kline was at Sony Studios' post-production facility, Colorworks, when the first of the burnt reels was delivered. He opened one of the cans to be faced with a warped reel with frayed edges, heads burnt, the film brittle and flaky. There was residue from tape, glue and wax all over the reel, yet, surprisingly, 30 digitised seconds revealed perfect images of Aparajito lying in between the sprocket holes.
Reel 3b of Aparajito was hand-carried to Bolgna, Italy, where after initial tests they realised the only way forward was to repair as much of the negative as possible and scan pin-registered wet gate, the most expensive procedure. The Criterion partnered with the Academy to fund the project. L'Ummagine Ritrovato offered a substantial discount. After a year at Bologna, repairing and scanning the restored negative, and hours of digital repairs and colour grading at The Criterion, they combed the archives for alternative film to replace the missing shots. They found it at Janus, a wing of the Criterion, and the Academy, along with some fine grain positives and dupe negatives at the British Film Institute.
“A complete assembly of the entire film was created in a digital timeline with an edit decision list identifying the best sections or shots of each film to be used. The scanning and digital restoration were kept in 4K resolution so that it would be the most affordable,“ explains Kline.
He admits that Apur Sansar had
very little original negative remaining after the fire, but because it
was made later, they had access to the best quality safety elements. And
the 35 mm fine grain that they ended up using almost in its entirety
printed well and had an excellent grey scale, so the final result is
exceptional even without access to the negative.“Pather Panchali was in the worst condition. The optically printed dissolves in the film were made crudely and quickly, and they were cut into the negative so they would snap out of the beautiful images surrounding them. Certain scenes in the negative were replaced by duplicate footage, so they looked generationally inferior to other sections. Wax was applied on the surface of the entire negative to preserve it, but the fire had melted it. Wet-gate scanning helped but only 40 per cent of the original negative could ultimately be used due to missing footage or extreme warping of the film which made the image unwatchable,“ explains Kline.
Aparajito had the most usable footage from the repaired and restored negatives. The replacement film too was also in good condition, so the final version is better than the restored Pather Panchali. “The filmmaking and editing was also more advanced, so the optically printed shots for dissolves and fades are more sophisticated,“ he says.
Months were also spent fixing scratches and tears, warping, flicker and instability, cleaning the dirt and upgrading the sound. Ryan Hullings, supervisor of the audio department at The Criterion, informs that most of the soundtracks were so damaged they were completely unusable. “The best surviving sound element uncovered for Pather Panchali was a 35 mm magnetic track provided by the Academy. It's a safety master made in the '90s after the fire. Working primarily in Pro Tools and using various digital tools, we manually removed the vestiges of age (clicks, pops, crackle, thumps, hiss, hum, distortion, dropouts), shaped the timbre using EQs and tightly synchronised sound with picture. I believe the film sounds better now than at any time since the day of its release,“ Ryan asserts.
For authenticity, they intentionally didn't smooth out the occasional abrupt change in room tone or dialogue quality resulting from the overdubbing of a line or a coarse audio edit.
Suitable audio sources for Apur Sansar were the most difficult to come by. The best source, a 35mm print, was incomplete so several reels from a second, inferior print were used to fill the gaps, and then another 35 mm mag which had been previously restored so sounded very different from the other two prints to complete the soundtrack. “For Aparajito we were lucky to turn up a decent, complete 35 mm print in Italy that was transferred in Bologna. It conformed easily to match our picture master, which was a relief."
Satyajit Ray's son Sandip met the restorers in Kolkata before they started and kept in touch throughout. Says Kline, “The biggest honour was when he came to New York for the premiere of the restored Pather Panchali at the Museum of Modern Art 50 years after it was shown there by his father and said his father would have liked what we did.“
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