Ray's drafts, papers for archieves

By K. Kannan

NEW DELHI, APRIL 6.

During the course of a rich working life, Satyajit Ray, arguably India's finest film-maker, also manifested his genius for the written and visual arts. In a career spanning almost half a century, Ray's creations -- as graphic artist, designer of advertisements, books and typefaces, a composer of music, screenplay writer, set and costume designer and writer -- revolutionised many areas of artistic life in the country.

Ray's study, in his family home in Kolkata, today houses an extensive amount of documents and personal papers related to the many facets of his art. This material is an evocative testimony to the artistic values he held in high regard. Realising the urgent need for preservation and conservation of this paper archives, the Society for Preservation of Satyajit Ray films -- formed in Kolkata in December 1993 -- is now in the process of preserving the Ray heritage for posterity.

The late film-maker's personal paper archives comprises over 70,000 individual items that include not only 13,500 pages of draft and final screenplays and scripts, but also drafts of set designs, music notations, costume designs, production stills, poster designs, personal photographs, draft and final prose writings in different languages, drafts of his fiction, personal correspondence, scrapbooks, advertising and other designs, book covers and book illustrations.

It also includes character sketches, calendar designs, publicity posters, calligraphy, typescripts, portraiture, advertising copy, logo design for titles and word games, written drafts of interviews, lectures and scrap-books, still photographs, phonographs, jackets and sleeve notes, drafts of radio talks, awards and citations. Significantly, large parts of this paper archives have not been opened for decades now.

With a grant from the Bangalore-based India Foundation for the Arts, the Society is in the process of sorting, classifying, indexing and cataloging the paper archive under the supervision of Mr. Sandip Ray, Member Secretary and Ms. Aditi Nath Sarkar, CEO of Ray Society. The aim also being preservation of the cinematic heritage of Ray for posterity, the sorting and conservation of film prints is already in process. These will be stored in dedicated environmentally-controlled film vaults to be located in the Capital.

While securing the protection of the Ray papers, the Society hopes to make digital copies of the archive widely available to scholars, film-makers and the interested public through, among other places, the Delhi-based National Archives. ``This will be especially useful considering the fact that the original location of papers are in the Ray family's private residence, where it is not available to the public,'' says Mr. Anmol Vellani, IFA's Executive Director.

Since protecting the individual fragile art-works, photographs and manuscripts is a task that needs to be done with the best possible informed professional supervision, Mr. Michael J Wheeler, Senior Conservator of Paper, Victoria and Albert Museum, London has agreed to be a consultant to the project. He has already familiarised himself with the Ray material and under his supervision, the Society has drawn up preliminary plans to sort and index the rich collection.

The primary material which comprise documents directly related to the Ray films will be classified, indexed and protected first. All photographs and photo negatives will be placed in glassine covers and interleaved with glassine as an intermediate. The project is expected to culminate in a large-scale exhibition ``The World of Satyajit Ray'' sometime next year.

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