Satyajit Ray

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Organizations from all over the globe approach the Satyajit Ray Society for loan of articles, either in the original or in digitized form, from the Ray Archive --- which is arguably the largest and most authentic of the achives on Satyajit Ray in the world --- to display them at exhibitions held in the memory of the great master. The Society encourages such shows as part of its programme for spreading the Ray awareness.

The Unused Folder Design For 'Pather Panchali' (Song of The Little Road )

A page from the unused Pather Pachali folder.

An archive on Satyajit Ray is an asset to the world. The Society for the Preservation of Satyajit Ray Films (Satyajit Ray Society) has been engaged in the task of restoring and preserving the priceless legacies --- most of them being originals and some copies in digitized form --- that Ray left to the world when he passed away in 1992.
The first task is the restoration of the Ray film classics. The second is the restoration and preservation of all the paper legacies --- running to about one hundred thousand pages --- that Ray left. They bear eloquent testimony to the many-faceted genius that Ray was.

Ray was not merely a filmmaker par excellence. He was a ‘many-in-one’ genius who wrote a large number of novelettes and short stories and illustrated them too, translated stories and poems in Bengali from English and vice versa, wrote songs and scored them, edited a children’s magazine, illustrated covers for innumerable books and magazines and stories by other authors,

drew costume and set designs for his films, created new type faces, and did advertisement artworks which changed the moods and patterns of publicity visuals in India. The Satyajit Ray Society has been restoring and preserving all these paper items diligently at the Ray archive located at the Kolkata home of the late master.

The much-photographed Ray study where he worked and received guests is the archive site. The paper restoration work has been going on there. The Society has also been classifying the books --- numbering about ten thousand --- in Ray’s personal library with a view to preserving them in a systematic manner. The personal effects of Satyajit Ray like his clothes, spectacles, watch, smoking pipes, paintbrushes, etc. have also been preserved with great care.

Costumes designs for Hirak Rajar Deshe
(The Kingdom of Diamonds).

Set design for Sonar Kella (The Golden Fortress).

Organizations from all over the globe approach the Satyajit Ray Society for loan of articles from the Ray Archive --- which is arguably the largest and most authentic of the achives on Satyajit Ray in the world --- to display them at exhibitions held in the memory of the great master. The Society encourages such shows as part of its programme for spreading the Ray awareness.

Notation for a song for Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne (The Adventures of Goopy and Bagha)

	A Ray letter here or a Ray sketch there has been surfacing still now with almost routine regularity. So the work of subjecting all the paper legacies of Satyajit Ray to an inventory and digitizing the originals is still in progress. However, the following is a broad list of the categories of his papers, books and personal effects restored and preserved by the Satyajit Ray Society:
Lobby Card for Shatranj Ke Khilari (The Chess Players )

1) Film Scripts 2) Posters 3) Booklets 4) Title Cards 5) Lobby Cards 6) Set Designs 7) Costume Designs 8) Pencil Sketches and Water Colour Drawings 9) Literary Manuscripts 10) Book Covers 11) Magazine Covers 12) Illustrations for Stories and Novellas 13) Music Notations 14) TV Stories
	Logos for Kanchanjungha

15) Shooting Schedules
16) Letters
17) Type Faces
18) Publicity Visuals
19) Movie Stills
20) Pictures of Ray Himself
21) Family Albums
22) Awards and Certificates
23) Paper Clippings
24) Personal Effects Like Clothes, Glasses, Watch, Smoking Pipe, Brushes for painting etc.
25) Personal collection of Books
26) Background Music in Spools and CDs.

Illustration for the Feluda novel
(The Royal Bengal Mystery).

Shooting schedule for Agantuk
(The Stranger )

Contributed by A K D

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