Memories & a snap: When Wenders met Satyajit Ray | India News

NEW DELHI: One was in his early 50s, a master film director on top of his game. ‘Pather Panchali’, ‘Jalsaghar,’ Charulata, among others, glittering his resume. The other was nearing 30, a work in progress, years away from his most unforgettable creations: ‘Paris, Texas’; ‘Wings of Desire’, ‘Until the End of the World’, ‘Perfect Days’.It’s been more than five decades since Wim Wenders first met Satyajit Ray at Berlin Film Festival of 1973. But the German filmmaker, now 79, and universally acknowledged as an auteur in his own right, remembers the encounter like the clear light of day. He recollects Ray’s film, ‘Ashani Sanket’ (Distant Thunder), playing in the competition and the Indian film director standing all by himself in the lobby of the festival theatre.”I took all my courage and approached him. He was extremely gentle when I introduced myself as a young director, and we talked for what seemed like a very long time to me. I remember how tall he was, and how kindly he answered all my questions,” recalled Wenders, on his first visit to India for a five-city retrospective, in an email interview. Ray stood at 1.93m, the German filmmaker 1.91m.”Of course, I saw his film, loved it,” said Wenders. The jury too loved Ray’s movie. Based on acclaimed writer Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay’s novel, ‘Ashani Sanket’ brought out the human tragedy of the 1943 Bengal famine and received the Golden Bear, the festival’s top award for best film. “In the following years, I managed to see other films of his in festivals or Cinematheques. That was the time before video stores, remember?”, the filmmaker said. Cinematheques were small movie houses specialising in avant-garde films.A snapshot of the two filmmakers in conversation, taken by the official festival photographer, is part of Wender’s persisting memory and fond memorabilia. “That photograph was moving with me through many apartments and accompanied me, when I moved to America and moved back to Germany eight years later again. I was hoping to add it to this interview, but we couldn’t yet find it in the archives of my foundation,” he said.In India at the invitation of Shivendra Singh Dungarpur of Film Heritage Foundation, a non-profit, Wenders is showcasing his works in Mumbai, Pune, Thiruvananthapuram, Kolkata and New Delhi. In all, 18 of his feature films, documentaries and shorts will be shown from Feb 5 to 23. He is currently in Mumbai. Wenders also recalled his earliest encounters with Indian cinema in mid-Sixties Paris when he was “hoping and trying to become a painter”.”But I was getting sidetracked by the Cinematheque Francaise, where you could see 4 to 6 films every day, from all over the world. I got more and more addicted, finally saw every film, every day, and thus got a crash course in the history of cinema. And yes, among them were also a good number of classic black and white Indian films,” he said.”As I was introduced to so many aspects of world cinema at the same time, it all got a little bit blurry in my mind. But that compact dose of a thousand films or so completely changed my life’s plan. Films, I figured, were the continuation of painting by other means. So, instead of becoming a painter, I enlisted at the first film school that opened in Germany in 1967 and shot my first feature length film in 1969,” he said.The world and its densities is Wim Wender’s sprawling canvas now. And he continues to find new colours to paint them in cinema.Check out the latest news about Delhi Elections 2025, including key constituencies such as Kalkaji, Karol Bagh, Tilak Nagar, New Delhi, Laxmi Nagar, Badarpur, Ghonda, Krishna Nagar, Model Town, Rithala, Trilokpuri, Najafgarh, and Matia Mahal.