By Nicholas Blair
Experts from universities across the globe converged at UC Santa Barbara last weekend for a three-day conference—Satyajit Ray and the Sense of Wonder—held by the UCSB Film & Media Department to celebrate the centenary of the birth of acclaimed Indian author, graphic artist, and filmmaker Satyajit Ray (1921 to 1992).
Speakers sang Ray’s praises, sharing discoveries they’ve made about his life and how he inspired them.
“Ray’s work aimed to instill in the viewer a sense of wonder,” said film professor Vinzenz Hediger of Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany. “Whether with the sublime, the marvelous or the supernatural.”
Ray mastered myriad art forms, becoming a successful film director, screenwriter, author, illustrator, calligrapher, music composer, and more. Born in Kolkata, he directed 36 critically acclaimed films. He won 11 international prizes for his first film alone, Pather Panchali (1955), and a total of 36 Indian National Film awards throughout his career.
From Satyajit Ray’s first film, Pather Panchali (1956).
During the first two days of the conference, 15 university professors presented essays analyzing Ray’s projects, identifying what particular work or element conveyed that “sense of wonder” most for them. Sudipta Sen of UC Davis and Meredith Bak of Rutgers University examined how Ray used child characters in his films, while Supriya Chaudhuri of Jadavpur University explored Ray’s cinematography.
The conference included screenings of the fantasy comedy The Adventures of Goopy and Bagha (1969) and its sequel The Kingdom of Diamonds (1980).
By Day 3, moderators Bhaskar Sarkar and Cristina Venegas—both Film & Media professors at UCSB—introduced Pinkai De, a graphic designer and English literature professor from Raja Peary Mohan College in Uttarpara, India. De’s presentation, “A Fine Balance: Form and Technique in the Graphic Designs of Satyajit Ray,” examined a side of Ray’s creative output rarely addressed in the discourse surrounding him: his graphic design.
Pinkai De, a scholar from India, showed some of the film posters Satyajit Ray designed. De spoke at a 3-day conference on Ray hosted by UCSB’s Film and Media Studies department.
Across the 90 book covers he designed for Signet Press from 1943-1953, Ray experimented with dozens of graphic styles, and became so involved with the bookmaking process that he also worked on the binding of each book and helped design their advertisements, De said. Ray’s incredible talent and meticulous design work emphasized process. For every final illustration he made there were dozens of doodles and rough drafts, a methodology De said is now taught in design schools worldwide. “We believe in processes. We don’t seek wonder, we arrive at wonder,” De said.
In addition to exploration and perseverance, art and culture arrives at wonder through generations sharing their knowledge and experience with one another, he added.
German scholar Vinzenz Hediger presented “Genealogies of Wonder: The Art Documentaries of Satyajit Ray.” Hediger’s essay probes Ray’s five art documentaries, all of which focus on genealogy, paying just as much attention to the family trees of the artists depicted in the films as to their work.
German scholar Vinzenz Hediger presents gave a talk called “Genealogies of Wonder: The Art Documentaries of Satyajit Ray” at a 3-day conference hosted by UCSB Film and Media Studies.
The conference speakers and attendees said Ray’s films and novels continue to inspire modern artists worldwide.
Following on from the conference, Satyajit Ray’s drama films The Golden Fortress and The Hero will be screened at the Pollock Theater at 7 p.m. on Monday, November 7th and Wednesday, November 9th respectively.
Nicholas Blair is a third-year UC Santa Barbara student, majoring in Film & Media Studies and minoring in English. He is a Web and Social Media Intern for the Division of Humanities and Fine Arts.