Page 2 - THE CHANGING WORLD OF RAY

The visionary Satyajit Ray

(1921-1992) is India’s most

famous director. His visu-

al style fused the aesthet-

ics of European realism

with evocative symbolic

realism, which was based
on classic Indian iconogra-

phy, the aesthetic and nar-

rative principles of rasa,

the energies of shakti and

shakta, the principles of

dharma, and the practice
of darsha dena/ darsha The Changing

lena, all of which he in-

corporated in a self-reflec- World of

tive way as the means of

observing and recording

the human condition in a Satyajit Ray:
rapidly changing world.

This unique amalgam of Reflections on

self-expression expanded

over four decades that cov- Anthropology

er three periods of Bengali

history, offering a fictional and History

ethnography of a nation
in transition from agricul- acters. They expand from

tural, feudal societies to a the Indian declaration of In-

capitalist economy. dependence (1947) and the

His films show period of industrialization

the emotional impact of and secularization of the

the social, economic, and 1950s and 1960s, to the rise

political changes, on the of nationalism and Marx-
personal lives of his char-