The Satyajit Ray Society launched the website 'www.worldofray.com' on Saturday here and said it planned to set up a museum to house the restored version of Ray's films. |
The museum would have an auditorium where Ray's films would be screened and a study centre and library where scholars can research Ray's works. |
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"We request the government to grant us some land or an existing structure to suit our requirements," said D N Ghosh, president of the society. |
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The website was inaugurated by Lok Sabha speaker Somnath Chatterjee, who said that there was no reason why the Satyajit Ray museum could not be set up. "The onus is on both the government and common people to keep the inheritance alive," Chatterjee said. |
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The Society for the preservation of Satyajit Ray films, popularly known as the Satyajit Ray Society, was formed in 1994 to preserve Ray's legacy of 36 films, thousands of pages of manuscript, illustrations, musical scores and notation sheets, movie stills, graphics, notebooks, posters, book covers, awards, memorabilia and more than 10,000 books. |
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"Much of it was deteriorating badly and had to be acid treated and cleaned page by page, then scanned, page by page, item by item, before converting them into digital images to be put up on the website. About 17 films have been restored with the support of Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences Archives (AMPASA). Under the existing arrangements with the Society, AMPASA would give us one copy of the restored print provided we have a vault that meets the stringent international quality standards for safe storage," informed Ghosh. |
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Sandip Ray, member-secretary of Satyajit Ray Society, said, "We plan to update our website every three to four months. The other future plan is to introduce an e-shop, where visitors would be able to buy Ray's films, books "� both by him and on him "� and various memorabilia and facsimile editions designed for this website." The Society hopes to achieve these objectives over a period of five years. |
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Also present at the occasion were Sudarshan Roychoudhuri, higher education minister, and other members of the society. |
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