Admission $2.00 per film, or 3 films for $5:00

Once into the rhythms of Bengali culture and the stages of Apu's life (childhood, youth, maturity) as depicted by Satyajit Ray in this sublime work, sitting through three films in one afternoon and evening can be a truly exalting experience, one not easily forgotten. Today's program is arranged to allow for a dinner-time break of approximately one-and-one-half hours.

Sometime in the early part of the century, a boy, Apu, is born to a poor Brahmin family living in their ancestral village in Bengal. The father - a dreamer, a poet, an optimist, but not a worker - leaves to his wife the burden of raising Apu and his sister, Durga, in poverty. As the years go by, the children bring home the increasingly complicated results of their forays into the village life (portrayed by Ray with inquisitive nuance). Drawing from neo-realist technique, using a cast of largely non-professional actors, Ray weaves this, his first film (recognized immediately in India and abroad as a masterpiece), into a portrait of Bengali life that is neither gay nor tragic, but so real as to be almost painfully moving.
“Everything is clear and in focus. The images speak and we listen with our eyes.... It is a world wholly articulate.... It is banal to compare (Pather Panchali) with any other Indian picture....” --Adib, Times of India Bombay, 1956. (JB)