A compilation of articles and short essays by Oscar winning director Satyajit Ray is a serious treat for cinema lovers

AFTER A RATHER long gap of 35 years here is good news for Satyajit Ray admirers. The filmmaker’s second English book on films—Deep Focus: Reflections on Cinema—is in the press and is slated for a December release. Ray’s first book—Our Films, Their Films—was published in 1976. Deep Focus is a collection of Ray’s writings that have been compiled and will be published by Delhi-based HarperCollins (India) in association with the Kolkata-based Society for the Preservation of Satyajit Ray Films, also known as the Satyajit Ray Society. The term deep focus is a photographic and cinematographic technique using a large depth of field, in which the foreground, middleground and background are all in focus. It is achieved through hyperfocal distance use of the camera lens. Deep focus is achieved with light and small aperture. It is also possible to achieve the illusion of deep focus with optical tricks. Deep focus was frequently used in cinema and filmmaking by Orson Welles and cinematographer Gregg Toland. Their film Citizen Kane (1941) is considered to be a textbook example of possible uses of the technique. Like its name, the book strives to put in focus several aspects of the filmmaker’s life through his writings. For those uninitiated, Satyajit Ray came from a family of litterateurs. His father, Sukumar Ray, was perhaps the most famous Indian practitioner of literary nonsense and has been often compared to Lewis Carroll. His works such as the collection of poems are considered nonsense masterpieces equal in stature to Alice in Wonderland. Sukumar Ray was the son of famous the children’s story writer Upendrakishore Ray Chowdhury. Coming from such a grand tradition, Satyajit Ray was a prolific writer in his own right. He wrote on cinema, film scripts and screenplays. Ray was also a children’s author, whose short stories and detective novellas are still a must-read for children in Bengal and Bangladesh. Deep Focus is an outcome of an intensive search conducted by the Ray Society for long-lost articles, which lay scattered in newspapers, magazines, film bulletins and publications. Essays that are to be included have tributes to silent cinema; challenges of adapting literary work to the screen (a topic that Ray has written extensively about); and a look into the experience of being a contestant and a member at film festivals. The book has been edited by Satyajit Ray’s filmmaker son Sandip Ray in association with actor Dhritiman Chaterji who has worked extensively with the senior Ray, Deepak Mukerjee and Debasis Mukhopadhyay. Filmmaker Shyam Benegal has written the foreword. In all probabilities the book will be released in Kolkata. The Ray Society plans to screen Benegal’s two-hour documentary on Ray at the event. All in all the book contains 22 essays and talks, the oldest dating back to 1949, at a time when Ray was still a 28-year-old struggling director, and has been divided into three sections: the filmmaker’s craft, pen portraits and his celebration of cinema. The first section contains essays and talks on cinema, the second his views on other directors as Jean-Luc Godard and Michelangelo Antonioni, Bergman and actor-and-director Charlie Chaplin. An interesting bit is on Bengali actor Uttam Kumar, a Bengali matinee idol who played leads in Ray’s Nayak (The Hero) and Chiriakhana (The Zoo). The third and final section deals with Ray’s experiences of, and views on, film festivals. The book is rich with images like film and production stills, rare portraits of Ray, and sketches and photographs by Ray. In addition, the book will contain 24-page photo-inserts printed in art paper. The cover has been designed by Pinaki De, under the guidance of Sandip Ray. The book also contains a detailed filmography of Satyajit Ray, a short piece on his contributions to films by others, a select list of the honours he received and a note on the Society’s work to restore, preserve and disseminate Ray’s works. The book launch is also a step towards setting up a ‘Ray Heritage Centre’ in the late filmmaker’s hometown.