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The Lethbridge Collection
Ray
FASC hosts the Lethbridge Collection of works on Satyajit Ray and works
by Satyajit Ray in major world languages. It comprises several thousand
books, journals, scrapbooks, posters, stills, records, cassettes, compact
disks, videos, brochures, bulletins and multiple forms of memorabilia.
It is, arguably, one of a kind to be found anywhere — a virtual
treasure trove for researchers, scholars and Ray fans.
Mr. Lethbridge was born in Gadag, Karnataka, India in 1939. After finishing his schooling, he joined the Eastern Railway at Howrah, West Bengal, India in 1959. One of his colleagues took him to see Apur Samsar, but he did not appreciate the Ray sensibility at that time.
He left the Eastern Railway and moved to Poona to work in an Engineering firm in 1961. Here he developed an interest in Italian Art and Culture. This led to a fascination with the "Spaghetti Western" genre.
In the the 1980s he migrated to Australia. He found a TV channel for the "ethnic" viewer where he saw the Apu Trilogy. After seeing these wonderful films, he wanted to see more of this filmmaker's works. He began to look for the various biographies published in English and comb through their bibliographies. It opened his eyes to the existence of vast scholarship on Ray and to "how much I didn't know about Ray's life and career!"
He searched for more materials on Ray and "once started, I was hooked!"
This precious collection was given to the Ray FASC by Mr. and Mrs. Cuthbert Lethbridge of Melbourne, Australia. They assiduously made world-wide searches to build the collection over a period of many years. The collection is in the process of being cataloged, and the fragile items are being curated for preservation. The collection continues to grow.
Ray FASC has published a preliminary catalog, available on request.
