Ajoy Kar


Ajoy Kar was an Indian cinematographer and film director. He directed 26 films between 1949 and 1983. His 1961 film Saptapadi was entered into the 3rd Moscow International Film Festival. His 1971 film Malyadan won the National Film Award for Best Feature Film in Bengali.

Early life

Ajoy Kar was born on 27 March 1914, in Calcutta, British India. He left college in 1931 to become a professional photographer, and took up cinematography a few years later.

Career

After initially working as an assistant to Jatin Das, Kar became a cinematographer at Indrapuri Studios, Calcutta, in 1938. Over the next four decades, he shot more than 80 feature films. He also shot a number of documentary films.
Kar's first film as director was Ananya, made by the Sabyasachi collective launched by Kanan Devi. The first film for which he received individual directorial credit was Bamuner Meye. During the 1950s and early 1960s, he emerged as a key figure in mainstream Bengali cinema, with a string of commercially successful films such as Shyamali, Harano Sur, Saptapadi and Saat Pake Bandha. Of these. Harano Sur and Saptapadi involved the popular romantic pair of Uttam Kumar and Suchitra Sen. These films also received critical acclaim.
From the late 1960s onwards, he made a number of films which were adaptations of well-known literary works, especially those by Rabindranath Tagore and Sarat Chandra Chatterjee. Some of these are Parineeta, Malyadan, Datta and Naukadubi. In all, he directed 26 films, the last being Bishabriksha.
Kar was always concerned about the technical aspects of filmmaking, and went to the USA in 1976 to learn colour film technology.

Awards and honours