Film Screening at Bushel: “Pather Panchali"

DELHI, NY—Bushel is pleased to screen Pather Panchali (dir. by Satyajit Ray, 1955), on Friday, June 3, at Bushel, 106 Main Street, Delhi. Doors open at 7 pm; screening begins at 7:20 pm. Seating is limited to 30; attendance is mask optional. This program is free to attend with a suggested donation of $5.

Pather Panchali, the first in Satyajit Ray’s The Apu Trilogy, depicts the childhood travails of the protagonist Apu and his elder sister Durga amidst the harsh village life of their impoverished family. The children enjoy the small pleasures of their difficult life, while their parents suffer the daily inequities and indignities of poverty. The film is based on the 1929 novel of the same name by Bengali author Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay, and features a mesmerizing soundtrack by sitar player and composer Ravi Shankar. Shot on location, with mostly untrained actors, this film is praised for its realism and humanity. Ray was committed to creating a cinema that presented and probed real Indian issues. Pather Panchali marks a turning point in Indian cinema as a pioneering work launching the Parallel Cinema movement that espoused authenticity and social realism. This was the director’s first film and remains his best-known.

Co-curated by Hobart poet Cheryl Clarke and Bushel collective member Mina Takahashi, the Mid-Century Movie Nights film series offers present-day viewers the opportunity to ponder the weight of the post-World War II era on its generation. From Rome to Tokyo, to the US Southwest, then to France, over to the Indian subcontinent, and back to gritty Manhattan, the films ask us to consider their subjects’ alienation, perseverance, and survival. As we witness the 1950s fascist regimes, exploitative working conditions, the loneliness of ageing, the indignities of poverty, the complexity of racial ambiguity, and the subtle and not-so-subtle ways racism and sexism play out, we ask ourselves today, what has stubbornly endured, and what has changed for the better?

The final film in the series will be Cassavetes’ Shadows, shown on June 10. Full descriptions of all six films in the series are on Bushel’s website (www.bushelcollective.org) and in a pamphlet available for pick up at Bushel, 106 Main Street.

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