Who was Satyajit Ray?
India’s greatest filmmaker is the deceptively simple answer, although for too many years, as the classics of world film faded away along with the art houses that screened them, Ray’s fame has been muted. His Apu Trilogy regularly turns up on the list of the best films ever made, but at the time of his death, it had been 10 years or more since he’d had a United States distributor, and the original prints of his films were in bad shape. He regularly shot on Ed Wood-sized budgets, and never made what anyone would consider a lot of money in the movie business. Did you know there is a Satyajit Ray Film and Study Collection at UC-Santa Cruz? Fortunately, the Merchant-Ivory team has picked up The Apu Trilogy for preservation and restoration, and new 35mm prints of Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road), 1955; Aparajito (The Unvanquished), 1956; and Apu Sansar (The World of Apu), 1960, will be screened starting this week at the Towne Theater in San Jose. The films chart the childhood and ma
