Gaston Roberge goes to Satyajit Ray’s house to invite him for the inaugural ceremony of ‘Chitrabani’ but Ray was not at home. So he kept a message to him about the venue, date and time of the function. Draft a message giving the necessary details.
Answers
Answer:
The friendship between a French-Canadian Jesuit and a Bengali film-maker led to path-breaking work in film studies.
IT was a unique friendship that developed between a French-Canadian priest and one of the world's greatest film directors, and had a singular impact on Bengali films both academically and practically. It was en route to India in 1961, at a stopover in New York, that 26-year-old Fr. Gaston Roberge was acquainted with the works of Satyajit Ray through the Apu Trilogy. He found the world of Apu so fascinating that he saw all three films in one sitting; and there began his longstanding love affair with the people of India and Bengali cinema and culture, which led to path-breaking work in those fields. In his latest book, Satyajit Ray, Essays: 1970-2005, a compilation of his essays as the name suggests, being published by Manohar Publishers, New Delhi, Roberge provides a scholarly, original analysis of Ray's works, giving an insight into the greatness of Ray both as a person and as an artist.
"The Apu Trilogy was, in fact, my first portal to West Bengal and its people," he told Frontline. In his youth, all he knew of Bengal was through Mircea Eliade's La Nuit Bengalie, some of Tagore's poems, and a Reader's Digest article on Mother Teresa. If the harsh image of poverty brought out by the article on the "Saint of the Slums" haunted him, Apu's world came as a reassurance. "No. Apu, Sarbajaya, even Harihar did not need my help - but how not to love them? I thought it was fortunate that I would soon be among them," he wrote.
Roberge does not endorse the accusation of Ray's detractors that the master director made his reputation selling India's poverty to the West. "What struck me most was not the material poverty depicted in the films, but the enormous spiritual richness of the characters, whose poverty didn't prevent them from being so deeply human and so full of joy. Besides, the spiritual poverty of some rich people is much more deplorable than material poverty," he said. Roberge does not speak with the arrogance of the West. "I was here on a quest to know the world and in the process know myself. I did not come here to convert. In fact, I am the one who got converted," he said.