Bansi Chandragupta

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Bansi Chandragupta (* 1924 in Sialkot , Punjab ; † June 27, 1981 in Brookhaven , New York ) was an Indian production designer and documentary director who worked in Bengali and Hindi films . His collaboration with the director Satyajit Ray was particularly intense .

Life

Bansi Chandragupta came from a Kashmiri Pandit family and grew up in Srinagar . Already as a child he was interested in painting and after leaving school he met the painter and art collector Subho Tagore (1912–1985) - a nephew of Rabindranath Tagore - who invited him to study in Kolkata and let him live in his apartment in the Metropolitan Building, which also housed the library of the United States Information Service (USIS). Chandragupta met Satyajit Ray and other art enthusiasts there and in Kolkata's artistic circles . With Ray, Chidananda Dasgupta and Harisadhan Dasgupta he was one of the first members of the Calcutta Film Society, which had dedicated itself to the showing of foreign art films.

Chandragupta had his first active experience with the film in 1947 when he was assistant to Subho Tagore, the set designer for the film Abhijatri by Hemen Gupta . After Tagore fell out with Gupta and the producer and writer Jyotirmoy Roy because of artistic differences and the substitute set designer fell ill, Chandragupta was given the job by chance. When Jean Renoir came to India in 1950 and made his film The River , Bansi Chandragupta was hired as assistant to production designer Eugène Lourié and learned the importance of designing the film set for the overall work. He used the experience he gained with the design of realistic film sets in Satyen Bose's Bhor Hoye Elo (1953) and received attention from Bengali filmmakers for this. For Pather Panchali , who was filmed at the same time, Chandragupta created an authentic set with village huts, furnished with furniture and everyday and household items that made a significant contribution to the credibility of the film, which is set in rural poverty. The story of the boy Apu won international awards and was the first of a continuous collaboration between Chandragupta and his friend Ray that lasted until 1970. A total of 20 joint films were made in which Ray had Chandragupta put his specific ideas about the film structures into practice.

For Aparajito (1956), the second film in the Apu trilogy , Chandragupta recreated the interior of Apu's family's apartment in Benares on the grounds of the Kolkata “Technicians' Studio” . The buildings, which are open to the top, were covered with white fabric based on an idea by the cameraman Subrata Mitra , which let in daylight without casting shadows. The work of these two technicians did not always make it easy, even for the trained eye, to distinguish between original seats and studio replicas. Among the best quality Ray Mitra Chandragupta productions in this respect are Charulata (1964) with a replica of a villa of the Bengali upper class of the late 19th century and Nayak (1966), whose interiors on the Rajdhani Express are all studio buildings. Chandragupta also applied the working methods established with Ray and Mitra in his films with Mrinal Sen - Baishey Shravan (1960), Akash Kusum (1965), Akaler Sandhaney (1980) - and Tarun Majumdar - Ektuku Basha (1965) and Balika Bodhu (1967) - on.

After the production of Pratidwandi (1970), Chandragupta left Ray's film team - like Subrata Mitra before - due to artistic differences and went to Bombay , where he then worked for Hindi films. Critical of the quality of the buildings in ordinary commercial Hindi film, Chandragupta found work mainly with young FTII graduates such as Kumar Shahani , whose debut film Maya Darpan (1972) he set. He worked at Piya Ka Ghar (1972) and Manzil (1979) with Basu Chatterjee , but also for the international Merchant - Ivory productions The Guru (1969), Mahatma and the Mad Boy (1974) and Hullabaloo over Georgie and Bonnie's Pictures ( 1978).

In Satyajit Ray's only non-Bengali feature film Shatranj Ke Khilari (1977) the two of them worked together for the last time. The film takes place at the end of the reign of Wajid Ali Shah in the Muslim kingdom of Avadh and is about the annexation by the British in 1856. During the preparations, Chandragupta and Ray studied, among other things, contemporary paintings by Nawab Ghaziuddin Haidar and miniatures, which are known for their attention to detail. From one of the paintings they copied the appearance of the throne of the Nawab of Avadh used in the film. For Muzaffar Ali's Umrao Jaan (1981) Chandragupta created a second time costumes and the court of the Nawab in Lucknow .

Chandragupta's recent works include Shyam Benegals Kalyug (1981), Aparna Sens 36 Chowringhee Lane and the Tarang by Kumar Shahani , published in 1984 . In Sens Film, Chandragupta recreated the living environment of Anglo-Indians in Kolkata. The work is dedicated to Bansi Chandragupta. His work influenced young production designers such as Nitish Roy , Nitin Desai and Samir Chanda .

In addition to his work as a production designer, Chandragupta made several documentaries that were produced by the West Bengal government . Of these, Glimpses of West Bengal (1967) won a National Film Award .

Bansi Chandragupta died at Brookhaven Memorial Hospital on Long Island, New York , at the age of 57, after suffering a heart attack while running after a train. He was with Satyajit Ray and Chidananda Das Gupta in the US to open a retrospective of Indian films organized by the Museum of Modern Art .

Awards

Filmography

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Bansi Chandragupta studied details from Oleographs of Raja Ravi Verma
  2. ↑ today “American Library” The American Library ( memento of July 19, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) on archive link ( Memento of the original of April 12, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed March 6, 2012 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / kolkata.usconsulate.gov
  3. ↑ Andrew Robinson: Satyajit Ray.The Inner Eye, 2004 edition, page 307
personal data
SURNAME Chandragupta, Bansi
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Indian production designer and documentary film director
DATE OF BIRTH 1924
PLACE OF BIRTH Sialkot , Punjab
DATE OF DEATH June 27, 1981
Place of death Brookhaven , New York