Thursday, March 7 2019 | 8PM Jalsaghar aka The Music Room India 1958 d. Satyajit Ray with Chhabi Biswas, Padma Devi, Pinaki Sen Gupta, Gangapada Bose, Tulsi Lahari, Kali Sarkar, Ustad Waheed Khan, Roshan Kumari and Begum Akhtar. In Bengali with English subtitles. Black and white. 100 m
“For all the rough edges, there is something of Welles here as the ageing aristocrat sits alone in his Xanadu, like Mr Clay in The Immortal Story, dreaming amid the remnants of past magnificence while the bulldozers of modern civilisation hum outside the walls. Something, too, of Chekhov’s tender irony as he rebels in a gesture of glorious folly, bankrupting himself to hire the best classical musicians around, dust off the vast chandelier, and bring his ancestral music room to glittering life once more for just one last regal extravaganza. Slow, rapt and hypnotic, it is – given some appreciation of Indian music – a remarkable experience.” Geoff Andrew
See Also: Parash Pathar aka The Philosopher’s Stone (Ray, 1958), Neel Akasher Neechey aka Under the Blue Sky (Sen, 1958), Ajantrik aka The Unmechanical (Ghatak, 1958)