Ray 100: 25 Great Scenes

How does one remember the great Satyajit Ray? To the Bengali he’s an inseparable part of life, who made populist entertainers even as he was making a splash at Cannes. A cinephile’s wet dream, who has left behind a body of work — 36 films — worthy of fanboying. He was quite simply one of the greatest filmmakers in the world — apart from being a beloved author and a cutting edge graphic designer, that is.

He was also a filmmaker’s filmmaker, an artist’s artist, whose technical mastery and emotional depths are perhaps best plumbed by… artists themselves. To mark the hundredth birth anniversary of the filmmaker then, we asked them (with some of us FC writers chipping in) to pick any one scene from a Ray film that’s close to their hearts. If you thought the appeal of his films is limited by language, culture, or a certain orientation of cinema, you’ll be surprised. What’s revealing about this list is the astonishing breadth of Ray's impact on a wide range of people: from directors and screen writers to a Carnatic vocalist, from a painter inspired by cinema to Bollywood music’s biggest hitmaker.