Satyajit Ray (1921 – 1992) was an Indian filmmaker, screenwriter, documentary filmmaker, author, essayist, lyricist, magazine editor, illustrator, calligrapher, and music composer.
Widely considered one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, Ray is celebrated for works such as The Apu Trilogy , Jalsaghar (The Music Room), Mahanagar (The Big City) and Charulata (The Lonely Wife).
Ray's first film, Pather Panchali (based on a classic Bengali novel by Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay), won eleven international prizes, including the inaugural Best Human Document award at the 1956 Cannes Film Festival. This film, along with Aparajito and Apur Sansar (The World of Apu), form The Apu Trilogy. Ray did the scripting, casting, scoring, and editing, and designed his own credit titles and publicity material.
Ray directed 36 films, including feature films, documentaries and shorts and authored several short stories and novels, primarily for young children and teenagers. Feluda, the sleuth, and Professor Shonku, the scientist in his science fiction stories, Tarini Khuro, the storyteller, and Lalmohan Ganguly, the novelist ,are popular fictional characters created by him.
In 1978, he was awarded an honorary degree by Oxford University. Ray received many major awards in his career, including 36 Indian National Film Awards, several international awards, and an Academy Honorary Award in 1992. The Government of India honoured him with the Padma Shri (1958), Padma Bhushan (1965), Padma Vibhushan (1976) and Bharat Ratna (1992). He was awarded the Dadasaheb Phalke Award in 1985, and the Legion of Honor by the President of France in 1987.
Satyajit Ray was born to Sukumar and Suprabha Ray, a Bengali Kayastha family in Calcutta (now Kolkata). Sukumar died when Satyajit was barely three, and the family survived on Suprabha Ray's meager income.
Ray completed his BA in economics at Presidency College, Calcutta, though his interest was always in the fine arts. In 1940, on the insistence of his mother he studied at Visva-Bharati University in Santiniketan, founded by Rabindranath Tagore.
Starting his career as a commercial artist, he was drawn into independent filmmaking after meeting French filmmaker Jean Renoir and viewing Vittorio De Sica's Italian neorealist film Bicycle Thieves during a visit to London.
Despite Ray's success, it had little influence on his personal life in the years to come. He continued to live with his wife and children in a rented house, with his mother, uncle and other members of his extended family.
Also see -
First-ever interview Ray gave to Doordarshan
Satyajit Ray - The Inner Eye by Andrew Robinson [PDF, Archive.org]