Bhawanipur to get feel of Chandannagar’s Jagadhatri Puja
Its slogan is ‘Chandannagar er Maa Jagadhatri ebar Bhawanipur e’ (goddess Jagadhatri from Chandannagar is visiting Bhawanipur). Goddess Jagadhatri is another incarnation of goddess Durga.
The actors of Sonar Kella, famous creation of Satyajit Ray will join a function to celebrate the film’s golden jubilee at a house in Paddapukur in Bhawanipur where Satyajit Ray had shot the film.
The key characters of the film, Soumitra Chatterjee (Feluda) and Santosh Dutta (Jatayu) are no more.
Kushal Chakraborty (who had acted as Mukul) and Siddhartha Chatterjee (Topse) will join the function on 20 February to release a calendar that has been produced by The Dreamers, said Sudipta Chanda, its director. Mr Sandip Ray will also be present at the function.
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The calendar titled Sonar Kella 50 contains photos from the shooting of the film, lobby card, posters, title card sketched by Ray. Ray collector Debashis Mukhopdhyay has joined hands and allowed the photographs of some of the items from his collection to be incorporated in the calendar.
Mr Chanda said, “It was a great experience to make the calendar. Mr Chakraborty who had acted as Mukul will release the calendar.”
It may be recalled that Sonar Kella was the second film which was produced by the Bengal government after Ray’s Pather Panchali.
Subrata Mukherjee, the information minister in Siddhartha Shankar Ray’s cabinet, was an avid reader of Bengali Puja numbers. Sonar Kella came out in a Puja number in 1971. Later, it was published as a book.
After reading it he went to the house of Satyajit Ray to make the film and assured him that the state government would produce the film.
Ray laughed at his proposal and asked him to talk to Siddhartha Shankar Ray, the then chief minister of Bengal and Ray’s long-time friend.
When the chief minister heard it from his minister, he said talk to Manik (Ray’s pet name) and take opinion. When Subrata Mukherjee told him that he had agreed to the proposal, the state government agreed to produce the film which was released in 1974.
The movie, Sonar Kella, brought the desert town of Jaisalmer where a fort made of sandstone is found in the international tourist map.
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