KOLKATA: Laurence Kardish remembered how Satyajit Ray’s cult ‘Pather Panchali’ changed his life when he watched the film in Ottawa, his home town.
Always interested in movies, Kardish had formed a student film society to watch films being made independently. In one such screenings, he watched ‘Pather Panchali’. “My life changed when I saw the film. I have not seen a work of such purity, humanity and the dramatic non-drama in everyday life.
I understood that despite the profound cultural differences including language, people are really the same across the world,” said Kardish, who delivered the Satyajit Ray Memorial Lecture at the 29th edition of Kolkata International Film Festival (KIFF) on Saturday at Sisir Mancha.
For over 44 years, Kardish has worked as a curator at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMa), New York and has organised over 1,000 film exhibitions. Recalling Ray as a ‘superlative filmmaker’, Kardish said in 1981, he organised a retrospective of Ray at MoMa. The retrospective had films of Ray, which were not screened earlier in the USA before. Ray introduced ‘Jalsaghar’ at the film fest and later held a Q&A session post screening of ‘Devi’.
Kardish also spoke highly about veteran film critic and historian Chidananda Dasgupta, who helped MoMa with his insights and contacts on Indian films.
Actress-director Aparna Sen, who welcomed Kardish at the lecture, also recalled his relationship with her father.
“I’m privileged to welcome Larry to Kolkata. He knew my father well,” said the Mr & Mrs Iyer maker.
Kardish also recalled his experience of watching ‘Mother India’ at a theatre in New Delhi in the 1980s. “The theatre was packed and every song was sung by the audience. It was one of the deepest experiences I ever had watching a movie anywhere,” he said.