conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Provide the first three paragraphs for a book with the title 'The Apu Trilogy'.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Apu Trilogy
  First, perhaps, I should confront the problem—which, confronted, appears more hypothetical than real—of the accessibility of Ray's films for Western audiences: can we feel any confidence that we are adequately understanding, intellectually and emotionally, works that are the product of a culture very different from our own? The problem has two aspects. One is content, our intermittent sense that certain passages or details in the films may mean something more, or something different, to Indian audiences. The other is tempo: the chief explicit grumble in the West about Ray's films is that they move slowly.
  The charge of Ray's cinema being "literary" might seem to carry rather more weight. Most of his films are adapted from novels and stories, and most of the originals have the reputation of being respectable, distinguished works in their own right. His art clearly has affinities with that of the novelist, his most obvious concern being with the nuances of character relationships and character development. Yet careful examination of almost any sequence in Ray's work will show that it has been conceived—or, when the literary original is closely followed, reconceived—in terms that are essentially cinematic. This holds true even of simple dialogue scenes taking place within a single set: camera position, camera movement, and editing are not mere functional appendages but play a leading creative role, so that the overall effect is not only nonliterary but nontheatrical.
  The whole scene is conceived in terms of a subtle interplay between separateness (editing) and contact (camera movement) that expresses the emotional flow with extraordinary precision. In the first shot, the apartness of the characters is suggested by having Ratan hovering in the background of the image while the man has his back to her. When he turns to her, Ray separates them by cutting. From there on, each time the camera moves, it is to express an inner movement toward contact. In (4), the camera tracks back to include the postmaster in the image at the moment when Ratan proudly displays her identification of the mother in the photograph and her ensuing question about the girl. Ray cuts to a close-up of Ratan; immediately she knows it is his sister, her sense of being unable to compete isolating her. In (9), the camera is at first on Ratan, then moves back to include the man; but he has his back to her and seems to have fallen asleep. The image becomes one of separation until the camera tracks in, without a cut, to show his eyes opening, the continuity of movement expressing the way the charm of the tentative, artless little song gradually gets through to him. (10) and (11) have the characters separate again as Ratan falters and admits, "That's all I know," and the postmaster laughs; but (11) continues with a track back from the close-up of him to take in Ratan as he says, "It was very good," and the two are again in emotional connection. The last shot (13), has them both in frame, with Ratan running out at the door by which she entered, reversing the movement of the opening shot of the sequence, giving the whole scene a formal symmetry. But this time the postmaster is facing her, and as she comes back and hesitates, he at last notices what she first came in to let him see, a confirmation of the new awareness of her and interest in her that has developed in the course of the scene. Hitchcock draws a distinction between "pure cinema" and "photographs of people talking," but if the concept of "pure cinema" is to have validity, it must be allowed to extend to a scene like this, in which the action is minimal and contains nothing that could not be done on a stage.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Provide two more paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Director: **Satyajit Ray**. Production company: Satyajit Ray Productions. Producer: **Satyajit Ray**. Screenwriter: **Satyajit Ray** , from a novel by Bibhutibhushan Banoyopadhyay (Bibhuti Bhushan Bannerjee). Cinematographer: Subrata Mitra. Art director: Bansi Chandragupta. Editor: Dulal Dutta. Music: Ravi Shankar. 105 min.
  Principle Cast: Soumitra Chatterjee (Apu), Sharmila Tagore (Aparna), Swapan Mukherjee (Pulu), S. Aloke Chakravarty (Kajal).
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Provide the last five paragraphs.. Start with the sentence 'Director: **Satyajit Ray**'.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Director: **Satyajit Ray**. Production company: National Film Development Corporation of India (NDFC), Canal+, DD Productions, Erato Films. Producer: **Satyajit Ray** , Gérard Depardieu, Daniel Toscan du Plantier. Screenwriter: **Satyajit Ray**. Cinematographer: Barun Raha. Ashoke Bose. Music: **Satyajit Ray**. Editor: Dulal Dutta. 120 min.
  Principal Cast: Dipankar Dey (Sudhindra Bose), Mamata Shankar (Anila Bose), Bikram Bhattacharya (Satyaki Bose), Utpal Dutt (Manomohan Mitra), Dhritiman Chatterjee (Prithwish Sen Gupta), Robi Ghosh (Ranjan Rakshit), Subrata Chatterjee (Chhanda Rakshit), Promode Ganguly (Tridib Mukherjee), Ajit Banerjee (Sital Sarkar)
  Director: Sandip Ray. Production company: Government of West Bengal. Screenwriter: Sandip Ray, from a story by **Satyajit Ray**. Cinematographer: Barun Raha. Art Director: Ashoke Bose. Music: **Satyajit Ray**. Editor: Dulal Dutta. 119 min.
  Director: Sandip Ray. Production company: Doordarshan, Filmopolis, National Film Development Corporation of India (NDFC). Screenwriter: **Satyajit Ray**. Cinematographer: Barun Raha. Art director: Ashoke Dutt. Music: Sandip Ray. Editor: Dulal Dutta. 90 min.
  Principal Cast: Soumitra Chatterjee (Dr. Sengupta), Debatosh Ghosh (Haladhar), Sadhu Meher (Jatin Kundu), Suvalakshmi (Manashi), Bina, Lily Chakravarty, Mirakshi Goswani