Something like cinema: Exploring Ray (Jaydip Mukherjee) India |

Something like cinema: Exploring Ray
Jaydip Mukherjee
India. 2025. 35 min

A documentary film that explores various influences that had shaped the filmmaking craft of Satyajit Ray. The influences, borne out of his meeting with a number of gifted individuals and his experiences of an array of perception-altering incidents had molded his aesthetic sensibilities and had made him what he was. The film strives to capture how the auteur Satyajit Ray had straddled atop diverse avenues of artistic pursuits, most of which had coalesced to form the identity of an unmatched narrator of ideas, – both persuasive and profound. This film attempts to capture all these influences that had imparted alchemic touches to turn him into an auteur of impeccable standing. It explores the aesthetic psyche of Ray that relates his images with his cinematic experiences. This Documentary retraces the influences that had shaped his sensibilities, some of them inherited while the remaining imbibed from the ambiance and the people that he had come across. Several of these facets such as Illustrator, Calligrapher, Musician and Author are partly eclipsed by his phenomenal standing as a Filmmaker, yet all of them were collaborating strands of his composite aesthetic universe.

JAYDIP MUKHERJEE

Jaydip Mukherjee is an acclaimed documentary filmmaker, began his cinema journey from the Indian Parallel cinema days in the early 1980’s. Many of films have been screened at the Indian Panorama of IFFI and many other international Film Festivals like Edinburgh, Cinema Peniche (Paris), Stuttgart, Toronto, Miff and KIFF. He is a recipient of UN FAO Award at AGROFILM Bratislava, and a Merit Plaque at Ashgabat, Turkmenistan. His retrospective of films was held at the White Chapel Art Gallery (London), Kennedy Millennium Auditorium (Washington), Art Institute (Chicago) and at Nandan, Kolkata organised by the FILMS DIVISION.