Since his schooldays, my father was a cinema addict in the true sense of the term lapping up Hollywood movies of Billy Wilder, William Wyler, Frank Capra and others as well as the timeless comedies of Chaplin and Keaton. The hobby gradually turned into a serious interest. The formation of the Calcutta Film Society in 1947 with a few like-minded friends opened to him the diverse range of European cinema, and in a sense, acted as a catalyst to his writings on cinema. In his first two articles, he heavily criticized the make-believe stereotypes of erstwhile Bengali cinema and called for soul- searching among the film-makers. The result-as he himself remarked later amusingly -"Nothing of that sort happened. The piece was simply shrugged off by the people of the trade as yet another piece of tomfoolery by some arrogant upstart who saw only foreign films and knew nothing of local needs and local conditions"
Later on, when he became a celebrated film-maker, there were always requests for articles from film club journals, newspapers and periodicals for their annual numbers.
Although by that time father was extremely busy with his two major pursuits - fil making and writing children's fiction - he always found time to pen down his thought In his own words, "The reason why I keep writing about films from time to time is the perhaps at the back of my mind there are still remnants of the zeal to spread the film culture that brought our film club into being." Thus, we get a surprisingly myriad array of writings over the years; spanning film criticisms, reflections on silent cinema, and eminent film personalities, festival musings and snippets of greetings for film festivals and retrospectives. Time and again he reminisced about people he admired and loved. He also generously wrote introductions to other people's works - books on film, photography, painting, translations, LP music records-which bear testimony to his reverence towards the exponents of these diverse art forms.
The Penguin Ray Library is a great step to curate important works of the master so that they are easily accessible under one roof. I am immensely thankful to Premanka Goswami, associate publisher, Penguin Random House India, for his unabated support throughout the gestation of the project. Thanks are also due to the film journal Chitravas for collating many of the rare and elusive pieces.
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