Next Masters of Asian Cinema at the Pickford: “The Music Room,” Dec. 3

The next Masters of Asian Cinema film is The Music Room, which screens at 6:30 p.m. on Monday, Dec. 3,  2018 at the Pickford Film Center (1318 Bay St.)

The Music Room was the fourth feature by Satyajit Ray, made just before the last film in The Apu Trilogy.  It stars the great actor Chhabi Biswas as a zamindar whose wealth once funded his reigning passion as a music lover.  Now that his wealth has faded, he resolves to scrape together funds so that he can once again host performances in his grand music room for other connoisseurs such as himself.  This effort reveals both current conflicts with a newly wealthy neighbor, and the deeper costs of his hobbies, revealed in flashbacks to the past. 

Co-sponsored by Western Libraries and the Pickford Film Center, each film in the Masters of Asian Cinema series begins with an introduction from select speakers including local professors, artists, and educators. The Music Room will be introduced by David Curley, Professor Emeritus in the Liberal Studies department at Western, where he taught South Asian cultural history.  He learned Bengali at the University of Wisconsin and the University of Chicago, where he obtained a PhD in South Asian History.  His research is on early modern social history and literature in Bengal.