This year sees the centenary of one of the really great film-makers in World Cinema. The question is not whether to celebrate this but whether we will be able to do with the films he wrote and directed in their original format, 35mm prints. Will the pandemic allow audiences to visit cinemas to enjoy these fine films? In West Yorkshire there are a limited number of venues where this could happen. Unfortunately the Hyde Park Picture House in Leeds will not re-open until 2022. The City Screen in York, like the company Picturehouse, has an uncertain future. This leaves the Media Museum in Bradford, the Sheffield Showroom and Hebden Bridge Picture House.

Happily the National Film Archive in Britain has a number of Ray’s finest films available in 35 mm prints. The condition of some of them is not great and it may be that not all are accessible for screenings. And the British Film Institute, which controls access to the archive, sometimes seems loath to ship prints outside London. The quality that comes from a 35mm print, even with scratches and jump cuts, make the efforts to screen such prints worthwhile. So these are the titles currently listed as held in the archive.

Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road) is a 1955 Bengali film produced by the Government of West Bengal. It was based on Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay’s 1929 Bengali novel of the same name and was Ray’s directorial debut. This first film in ‘The Apu Trilogy’ depicts the childhood of the protagonist Apu and his elder sister Durga and the harsh village life of their poor family.

I first saw this film in my early film society years. It was a wonderful eye-opener to a very different cinema. One impressive sequence shows a first sight of a train thundering and smoking across the landscape; a trope that I have seen again many times in Indian films.

Aparajito (The Unvanquished) is a 1956 Bengali film and is the second part of ‘The Apu Trilogy’. It was adapted from the novels ‘Pather Panchali’ and its sequel ‘Aparajito’ (1932). It starts off where the previous film ended, with Apu’s family moving to Varanasi, and chronicles Apu’s life from childhood to adolescence in college, right up to his mother’s death, when he is left all alone.

Apur Sansar (The World of Apu) is a 1959 Bengali film and.the third part of ‘The Apu Trilogy’, about the childhood and early adult life in the early twentieth century Indian subcontinent. The film is based on the later part of the novels by Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay.

Released in 1959, The World of Apu focuses on Apu’s adult life. This was the first Ray film that I saw on 35mm and it is the final part of the trilogy. It has wonderful sequences as Apu enters married life. There is a Tonga ride back from an entertainment: a scene of domesticity of Apu and his young wife: and finally a sequence of father and son which is a fine expression of the humanist values that inform Ray’s films.

Jalsaghar ( The Music Room) is a 1958 Bengali film based on a popular short story by Bengali writer Tarasankar Bandyopadhyay. The fourth of Ray’s feature films, it was filmed in a village in West Bengal. Jalsaghar depicts the end days of a decadent zamindar (landlord) in Bengal and his efforts to uphold his family prestige while facing economic adversity. The landlord is a just but otherworldly man who loves to spend time listening to music and putting up spectacles rather than managing his properties ravaged by floods and the government’s abolition of the zamindari system.

Devi (The Goddess) is a 1960 Bengali film based on a short story by Provatkumar Mukhopadhyay. ‘Devi’ focuses on a young woman who is deemed a goddess when her father-in-law, a rich feudal land-lord, has a dream envisioning her as an avatar of Kali.

Rabindranath Tagore is a 1961 documentary film produced by Films Division of India in English about the life and works of noted Bengali author Rabindranath Tagore. Ray started working on the documentary in early 1958. Shot in black-and-white, the finished film was released during the centenary year of Rabindranath Tagore.

Teen Kanya is a 1961 Bengali anthology film based upon short stories by Rabindranath Tagore. The title means ‘Three Girls’, and the film’s original Indian release contained three stories. However, the international release of the film contained only two stories, missing the second (‘Monihara: The Lost Jewels’).

Kanchenjungha (Kanchonjônggha) is a 1962 Bengali film. The film is about an upper class Bengali family on vacation in Darjeeling, a popular hill station and resort, near Kanchenjunga.

Abhijan (The Expedition) is a 1962 Bengali film. When a corrupt cop takes away Narsingh’s taxi license after an illegal car race, Narsingh finds himself reduced to poverty living in the outskirts of Kolkata. A practicing Sikh, he finds himself having to accept work from a dubious business man, Sukhanram, who employs Narsingh in dope smuggling.

Mahanagar (The Big City) is a 1963 Bengali film based on the short story ‘Abataranika’ by Narendranath Mitra, it tells of a housewife who disconcerts her traditionalist family by getting a job as a saleswoman. Shot in the first half of 1963 in Calcutta, this was also the first film directed by Ray set entirely in his native Calcutta, reflecting contemporary realities of the urban middle-class, where women going to work is no longer merely driven by ideas of emancipation but has become an economic reality.

Charulata (The Lonely Wife) a 1964 Bengali film. Charu lives a lonely and idle life in 1870s India. Although her husband Bhupati devotes more time to his newspaper than to their marriage, he sees her loneliness and asks his brother-in-law, Umapada to keep her company. At the same time Bhupati’s own cousin, Amal, a would-be writer comes home finishing his college education.

Chiriakhana or Chiriyakhana (The Zoo] is a 1967 Indian Bengali crime film, based on the story of the same name by Sharadindu Bandyopadhyay. Rather different from many of Ray’s other films we follow Byomkesh Bakshi, a detective, is hired by a rich man to investigate the name of an actress appeared in a movie decades ago, who has eloped ever since. The case became complicated when the rich man is murdered by someone for that.

Aranyer Din Ratri (Days and Nights in the Forest) is an Indian Bengali film released in 1970, based upon the Bengali novel of the same name by Sunil Gangopadhyay. The partly dramatic story is undercut by the treatment which often includes humour. A group of Calcutta city slickers, including the well-off Asim, the meek Sanjoy and the brutish Hari, head out for a weekend in the wilderness.

Jana Aranya is a 1976 Bengali film, based on the novel of the same name by Mani Shankar Mukherjee. It is the last among Ray’s Calcutta trilogy series, the previous two being, Pratidwandi (The Adversary, 1970) and Seemabaddha (Company Limited, 1971). The film portrays the economic difficulties faced by middle-class, educated, urban youth in 1970s India.

Shatranj Ke Khilari (The Chess Players) is a 1977 Indian film based on Munshi Premchand’s short story of the same name. Wajid Ali Shah, King of Awadh, is a devotee of chess. This plays into the machinations of General James Outram and his empire-building designs. This is the first Hindi feature film of the film-maker..

Sadgati ( Salvation [or] Deliverance) is an 1981 Hindi television film directed by Satyajit Ray, based on a short story of same name by Munshi Premchand. Ray called this drama of a poor Dalit “a deeply angry film [. . . ] not the anger of an exploding bomb but of a bow stretched taut and quivering.”

From his pioneering neo-realist films in the 1950s, through his more modernist and critical studies of his home culture, Satyajit Ray has been a dominant force, both in his home cinema and in the wider world of art and foreign language distribution. His films are generally both scripted and directed by himself. And, like many other key film-makers he regularly worked with certain actors and craft people. Their contributions are important and the majority of his films have a fine form, style and production delivery. I hope to see many of the above titles, and hopefully, prints from other archives in this year of celebration.

See Roy’s re-appraisal.