Rabindranath Tagore (film)

Rabindranath Tagore is a 1961 blackandwhite short film directed by an Indian director Satyajit Ray on the life and works of noted Bengali author Rabindranath Tagore. Ray started working on the documentary in the beginning of 1958 and it was released during the birth centenary year of Rabindranath Tagore, who was born onMay 1861. Ray avoided the controversial aspects of Tagores life in order to make it as an official portrait of the poet. Though Tagore was known as a poet, Ray did not use any of Tagores poetry as he was not happy with the English translation and believed that it would not make the right impression if recited and people would not consider Tagore a very great poet, based on those translations. Satyajit Ray has been reported to have said about the documentary Rabindranath Tagore in his biography Satyajit Ray The Inner Eye by W. Andrew Robinson that, Ten or twelve minutes of it are among the most moving and powerful things that I have produced.

Rabindranath Tagore was born onMay 1861 to Debendranath Tagore and Sarada Devi, the youngest of thirteen surviving children. At the age of seventeen, he was sent to London for higher education, however, he did not finish his studies there. He started a school at Santiniketan which was based on Upanishadic ideals of education. He also participated in the Indian independence movement. Tagore became the first nonEuropean to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913. He was awarded for his collections of poems, Gitanjali Song Offerings, which included 103 poems with his own English translations of his Bengali poems. In 1915, the British Crown granted Tagore a knighthood. He renounced it after the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre. At the age of 80, Tagore died onAugust 1941 in his ancestral home in Calcutta.Narrated by Satyajit Ray, the film begins with the funeral procession of Rabindranath Tagore. Briefly mentioning about Kolkata, then known as Calcutta, the documentary explains the Tagore lineage, starting with Dwarkanath Tagore. While documentary mentions Dwarkanath Tagores elder son Debendranath Tagores association with an Indian religious, social, and educational reformer Raja Rammohun Roy and introduces some of his children out of fourteen, it moves to the birth of child Rabindranath Tagore, fondly called as Robi. The film then narrates Robis initial schooling days, his trip to northern India with his father, publication of his first poem in his fathers magazine and his failed attempt for higher education at London. ........

Source: Wikipedia