A biographical portrait of Bimal Roy, the Indian film producer, was introduced in the Silver Room at the Rye Kino on Sunday July 15 by Anwesha Arya. Anwesha had co-edited the volume, recently published by Penguin Books. Accompanied by her actor husband Sagar Arya and their four children, she welcomed guests and film-goers over a glass of wine and samosas.
Our hostess explained that the occasion also marked the 109th birthday of her grandfather Bimal Roy, the first Indian film producer to win the Prix International at the Cannes Film Festival in 1954.
She spoke of Bimal Roy’s social vision that was consistently projected through his art, believing that the cinema could bring together people of different cultures in order to help mankind realise its essential and universal kinship.
In his film Do Bigha Zamin, Roy explored how disparity of wealth and income corrupts the fabric of society and destroys the individual well-being of the poorer people, without regard to their fundamental human rights. The film was set in an impoverished rural village community, moving to and from the streets of Calcutta, as a family sought desperately to retain its two acre smallholding comes up against the pressures of capitalism without a human face. As a quasi-historical document of Indian life in the middle of the last century, the film was of great interest.
Viewed perhaps as an idealistic portrait of the innate goodness and generosity of the common people as opposed to the greed and self-interest of the class system, the film held sustained emotional power through its storyline, heightened by choregraphed dance and music, and the superb cinematic quality of its photography.
On this viewing, I can recommend buying tickets for another Bimal Roy film, Sujata, showing on Sunday July 22 at 8:30pm, preceded again by a book launch at 7:15pm.
Tickets are £15 each from Grammar School Records in the High Street, with proceeds in aid of the charity Cancer Research.
Photos: Kenneth Bird