Satyajit Ray, Pather Panchali and film teaching

Two things happened to inspire this post:

1. My teacher Surender Chaudhary started writing a new blog about Satyajit Ray and Pather Panchali, which triggered a ton of memories of my FTII days.
2. I am about to begin teaching a new batch of students in Meerut, at the IFTI. 

How do these connect? That's my blog.

When I went to FTII, Satyajit Ray was still alive and making films. Pather Panchali and Apu Triology were the texts to study, partly because of Prof Satish Bahadur's presence. Despite all the youthful rebellion amonst FTII students towards Prof Bahadur, none of us could really miss his immense learning and openess to new ideas, movies and perspectives. Of course very soon we grew up to love Ray by ourselves (I think usually when we began to do oour exercise films seriously, though this couls be my experience alone). Ray and his work stayed with all FTII students over the years, it was a 'branding' in the very literal sense of the word. 

All this came back to me when I returned to India and my hometown of Meerut and found a film school there. I went there out of curiosity and no one, quite literally no one, had ever heard of Satyajit Ray. I came home after showing two of my films there, saying this place is too disgusting for me (it was a fast food joint for someone brought up on fine dining). Then I thought about it a bit more and said either I am part of the problem or I am part of the solution. So I started teaching there whenever I was free. 

Now I am about to begin a new batch of students at the IFTI and for the first time, hope to unleash Satyajit Ray upon them. I use the word 'unleash' in full knowledge of its meaning, Ray's work will bite and haunt the students in a manner that they do not realise. It will change them in certain fundamental ways if they want to make films in India.

But therein lies a problem.

In the past students here at IFTI are not inclined to be filmmakers! The moment the reality of the world of filmmaking and its complexities dawn upon them,  40% of the students want to quit filmmaking, the rest want to be Assistant Directors or TV Producers (and shift to journalism). 

That's a very different world from our days at FTII (and even now ) where we slept dreamt and woke up be filmmakers and pursued that with a lot of determination. Watching films, learning how to make them, discussing them occupied our days.

Clearly a lot has changed.

But now I'm going to try another foolhardy step to educate students in cinema, in a non-conducive milieu.

Why am I doing that?

Because I believe there is a fundamental value to appreciating art in our development as human beings. My teaching cinema is a way of propogating that basic value.