At the 2014 unite4:humanity Gala, Martin Scorsese received the Creative Conscience Award, recognizing him for his continued work in film preservation. During his acceptance speech, he made a point to connect his long-term efforts in film preservation to the work of Indian director Satyajit Ray. Scorsese offered these words near the conclusion of his speech: “As a kid, living in the lower east side, the first film I really saw about India was Pather Panchali by Satyajit Ray. And I realized it was a film by Indians, for Indians, [and ultimately] for the world. And it brought me to learn about the rest of the world.”
Pather Panchali (1955) is Ray’s first film, and the first of his famous Apu Trilogy, based on two Bengali novels written by Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay. Ray’s directorial debut would receive swift international acclaim when, at the 1956 Cannes Film Festival, Pather Panchali won the Best Human Document Award. But across time, praise for Ray’s masterpiece––as well as his at-large contributions to cinema––would only continue to mount. At the 1992 Academy Awards, Ray was presented with the Honorary Oscar for lifetime achievement in film. He was dying from heart and lung ailments, and his acceptance address was filmed from his hospital bed. Ray couldn’t even sit up to make his acceptance speech when Audrey Hepburn introduced him, citing the award for his “profound humanism” and “rare mastery” of the medium of film (Meher Tatna). He died less than one month later.
Due to a number of devastating complications, Ray’s Apu Trilogy was almost entirely lost to the world––saved only through a decades-long international preservation effort. And interestingly enough, the 1992 Academy Awards would serve as the catalyst for those efforts. The producers who put together the 1992 Oscars telecast had a lot of difficulty assembling the clip package. “The prints they found [of Ray’s films] were beat up, scratched, mangled, and missing sections,” explains Michael Pogorzelski, Director of the Academy Film Archive (An Act of Faith: Saving the Apu Trilogy). And just as people were beginning to commit themselves to preserving Ray’s masterpieces, there was a tragic fire at Henderson’s Film Lab in London. As a result, several vaults of film were totally destroyed or otherwise severely damaged––the original negatives of Ray’s Apu Trilogy among them. “But luckily,” explains Pogorzelski, “the Director of the Academy Film Archive asked for all of the film, and any even film cans related to Ray’s films to be shipped from London to Los Angeles.” Peter Becker, President of The Criterion Collection, celebrates these efforts as an act of faith. “Calling to have [the film] sent to the Academy to be preserved,” he says, “and not throwing it out despite the fact that it had been deemed ‘completely unusable’ is the kind of act of faith that says, ‘This film that passed through the camera, that those actors stood in front of, that the director caused to roll in the first place, and caused to cut––there’s something sacred about that. And it has to be preserved.’” (An Act of Faith: Saving the Apu Trilogy)
The film sat for 20 years before L’Immagine Ritrovata––a film restoration lab in Bologna––acted on their conviction that they could nondestructively get the film into a condition where it could be scanned and tested. This lab spent thousands of hours rehydrating the reels so that they could be safely unrolled, to then rebuild the perforations and clean the film. This then began 6-7 months of digital restoration work, made possible by The Criterion Collection. “Ray is known for his narratives, and is a very humanist filmmaker. But I think he’s underappreciated as a visual storyteller,” says Josef Linder, Preservation Officer of The Academy Archive. “We’ve preserved these films at their full visual quality––the full impact of the images, not just the stories.”
In 2015—60 years after Pather Panchali’s release––The Apu Trilogy was, at long last, re-released by Janus Films in a pristine 4K restoration, made available in a Criterion Blu-Ray set. This international effort at film preservation reflects the world’s love for Satyajit Ray’s singular contributions to cinema, the fruits of which will be experienced for generations to come. “To live without seeing the films of Satyajit Ray,” said Akira Kurosawa in 1975, “means existing in the world without seeing the sun or the moon.” Sidewalk is thrilled to offer two screenings of Ray’s masterpiece, Pather Panchali, on the evening of March 20th (“moon”) and the afternoon of March 23rd (“sun”). We hope you’ll join us in observance of this hard-fought masterpiece from a one-of-a-kind director.
– Education & Outreach Coordinator Peyton Chandler
Pather Panchali plays as a part of our Sidewalk Film 101 series March 20 at 7:00pm and March 23 at 1:00pm. You can get tickets here.