drawing;
title card
- Museum number
- 2017,3059.6
- Description
-
Drawing made for a title card for the film 'Kanchenjungha' by the Bengali film-maker and polymath, Satyajit Ray (1921-1990); one of a sequence of twelve.
Watercolour and coloured inks on paper. The title card is made up of both word and image
1 - the text, mostly at the top and to the left of the page as viewed, reads -
'Assistants
Assistant Directors: Sailen Dutta, Nityananda Dutta, Tapeswar Prasad, Amiya Sanyal
Camera: Purnendu Bose, Pantu Nag
Sound: Sujit Sarkar, Sunil Ram, Anil Nandan, Jyoti Chatterjee
Editors: Tapeswar Prasad, Kashinath Bose
Production Managers: Bhanu Ghosh, Dulal Das
Make-up: Nitai'
The job titles are written in red ink while the names are in black ink. Both are written in a cleverly Tibetanised form of Bengali script devised by Ray himself and mirroring the location of the film on the edge of both the Bengali and the Tibetan worlds, in Darjeeling.
2 - the image at bottom right, as viewed, shows three women porters carrying large loads (two tin trunks and one bedding roll) up the steep hillsideof Darjeeling (they are 'the assistants'!) The carry them in the distinctive hills manner using a strap that goes across the forehead and under the back of the load. To keep the load in place they need to lean forwards as they climb the hill. A few palm and pine trees are seen in the background, with the misty hills beyond.
- Production date
- 1962 (Film produced in, so the drawing probably done a year or more before this date.)
- Dimensions
-
Height: 33.30 centimetres (Measurement of the Indian paper into which the drawing is set)
-
Width: 42.40 centimetres (Measurement of the Indian paper into which the drawing is set)
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- The film ‘Kanchenjungha’ tells the story of a well-to-do Bengali family who go on holiday to the hill-station of Darjeeling. In the film, the mores of the family are gently mocked, with the stereotypes being relentlessly exposed against the atmospheric background of the high Himalaya (famously, visitors to Darjeeling flock to Tiger Hill early in the morning to view Kanchenjunga (sic) as it is bathed in the first rays of the rising sun; it is one of the renowned ‘sights’ of the town).
Satyajit Ray was one of the most important cultural figures in the 20th century in India, some would say in the whole world. His fame and his influence nationally and internationally has been huge. The Japanese film-maker Akira Kurasawa famously said of Ray’s films that ‘Not to have seen the cinema of Ray means existing in the world without seeing the sun or the moon’.
Any attempt to speak about the cultural life of South Asia in the 20th century has to acknowledge him. Arguably, film is the most important, certainly the most popular avenue of cultural expression in India today, and these drawings while being produced by the most important Indian film director of our times, also connects with the cultural world of Rabindranath Tagore as both Ray and Tagore came from reformed Hindu families (from the Brahmo Samaj) based in Calcutta and Ray (from a younger generation than Tagore) studied at Tagore’s famous university at Shantiniketan.
Ray’s career in the cinema is well-known and he was honoured throughout his life, eventually (and on his deathbed) receiving an Oscar award in recognition of his lifetime’s work in the cinema.
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
2022 Dec - 2023 Jun, London, BM, G33, rotation
- Condition
- Mounted in India on account of some insect damage; now stable. Will go for mounting in BM Studio.
- Associated titles
Associated Title: Kanchenjungha (Film title)
- Acquisition date
- 2017
- Acquisition notes
- Drawn by Satyajit Ray; inherited by Sandip Ray; purchased from Sandip Ray
- Department
- Asia
- Registration number
- 2017,3059.6