![]() ![]() LA: Tagore enjoyed a very great reputation in the West at one time, but isn't known so much now. Ever since then we've had a literary tradition, Tagore wrote something like 1,500 short stories, three or four hundred of which are masterpieces and very filmable and I've done about half-a-dozen so far. The novel happened in the late part of the nineteenth century, influenced by the British. There has been a tradition because we've had a literary tradition in Bengal too - quite a rich fund of stories and novels, quite a lot of which have been adapted. So I think it's fair to say we have a tradition in Bengal, not that I think of myself as belonging to the mainstream. Sound film, again, started soon after Hollywood, in 1931 I imagine. Most of the silent films were burnt in two big fires, so we don't get to see them anymore - they weren't properly stocked. The silent movies looked very much like any other silent film. It was the Parsees from Bombay who started the industry in Calcutta, then it was taken up by Bengalis, and we've had an industry ever since then. There were very few Bengali fimmakers and actors in those days. The cinema industry in Calcutta started not long after that. I think the first feature was made in Bombay in 1913, not so long after Hollywood. SR: We have been making films ever since the silent days of the 1920s, I should imagine. But I thought I'd ask something about the Bengali cinema, which has a tradition of its own, was there a tradition of making films in Bengal when you started? LA: Well, one never likes to be called uncommercial, because our aim is to be commercial. We also try to be commercial in our own way. But Bombay is the centre of commercial film-making, really. ![]() We were flown to Madras, Calcutta and Bombay and one realised what a distinction there is between the Bombay film-makers, who are Hindi, the Madras film-makers, who are Tamil. There are three centres of production, each representing a very different type of film-making, which I got to know a little bit about at the '65 film festival. LA: We don't know much about the Indian cinema apart from your films. There's a tendency to call you an Indian film-maker, when it would be more accurate to call you a Bengali film-maker. I always think that, in Britain, we are terribly ignorant about India, as befits an ex-imperialist nation. I think what Mr Ray likes best is concrete questions rather than speculative questions because, like any artist, these can best be answered by looking at his work. So we're going to make the best of it with your cooperation. Lindsay Anderson: I've left all my notes behind, which is a Freudian error because he hates this sort of thing and when I'm in his position I hate it. ![]() In this interview, the director discusses his early films and influences, the novelists he has adapted, and the evolution and future of his film-making. Satyajit Ray was interviewed by Lindsay Anderson at the NFT, in 1969 or 1970. ![]()
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