Original sketches of Goopy Bagha to be on display

KOLKATA: It has been a mystery to fans exactly how Satyajit Ray brought to life his grandfather Upendrakishore Roychowdhury’s Goopy and Bagha on screen. From the props to the clothes, from the expressions to the make up, fans have wanted to know how Ray recreated them for the audio-visual medium. All that will be uncovered at the week-long exhibition planned on Goopy Bagha by the Society for the Preservation of Satyajit Ray Archives at Gaganendra Shilpa Pradarshashala from April 27 to 30.


There were illustrations that Upendra kishore drew for the original story, but those weren’t enough to bring the characters to life on film. So Ray started an all new kheror khata to sketch the concept. It was a long process and the sketches evolved with the master to arrive at what we see on film.

“Many of these sketches have remained unseen and we, as a family, would be happy to share them with Goopy Bagha fans,” said Ray’s son Sandip. “It has always been said that my father sketched every moment before filming it. He was a genius in this. You will see how the unforgettable ghost dance first happened with pen and ink. The inimitable expressions that Tapen Chatterjee and

Rabi Ghosh

brought to life were actually the result of days of sketching and discarding and sketching again,” Sandip added.

The society has digitized these sketches for the exhibition that is also its tribute to Ray on the film’s 50th year. The society’s CEO, Arup K De, said the exhibition will also showcase rare photographs from the shooting taken by Nemai Ghosh, who was a regular companion of Ray.

The society was founded in 1994 with the object of restoring and preserving priceless legacies left by the master director. It has arranged a number of exhibitions of Ray’s artwork and festivals of his films and seminars on his work — at home and in places like Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Toronto,

Valladolid

, San Francisco, London and Amsterdam.

“When Ray passed away in 1992, negatives and prints of many of his films, especially his early classics, were in a precarious state. David H Shepard, a film preservationist in California, had come to India to examine the original negatives. He found the negatives of 18 of Ray’s films in tatters,” De said.

The society tied up with Los Angeles-based Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences that had conferred the Oscar for Lifetime Achievement on Ray. So far, a large number of the maestro’s 36-film oeuvre has been restored at the Academy archives.