Cinematographer Soumendu Roy passes away

Cinematographer Soumendu Roy passes away

Cinematographer Soumendu Roy, known for Abhijaan (1962), Palatak (1963) and Chiriyakhana (1967), has passed away at the age of 90. According to reports, he was suffering from old age problems. He breathed his last at his house on Ballygunge Circular Road on Wednesday (September 27). Besides Satyajit Ray, he also worked with a number of acclaimed filmmakers like Tapan Sinha, Tarun Majumdar, Buddhadeb Dasgupta, and MS Sathyu. 

Soumendu Roy was born on 7th February 1933, and he met with Satyajit Ray in 1954. Starting as a handler of trolley and lighting in early Ray films, Roy went on to work on 21 of Satyajit Ray's films including 15 features, Golden Bear winning film, Ashani Sanket (1973), and Aranyer Din Ratri (1969). Soumendu Roy was Subrata Mitra's assistant in Satyajit' Ray's first film Pather Panchali. Then in 1961 he independently started working with Satyajit Ray in the film Teen Kanya.

Roy was an advisor of the cinematography department of "ROOPKALA KENDRO" an Indo-Italian film institute under the Information and Cultural Ministry of the government of West Bengal. It is known that Roy was unmarried. And he used to spend his days with film studies and students.

In his long career, Soumendu Roy won the National Film Award for Best Cinematography three times, plus one Best Non-Feature Film Cinematography award for a documentary film, Suchitra Mitra in 1993, directed by Raja Sen. In 2006, a 30-minute documentary on him, "Portrait of a Cinematographer", was screened at the International Film Festival of India (IFFI) in Goa, directed by Papia Roy, and subsequently, Soumendu Ray, a 70 min. documentary by Arindam Saha Sardar.