Issue 58: May 2021: Special commemorative issue: 100 years of Satyajit Ray – the indefinable genius [Last date for submission: 31 March, 2021; Date of publication: 2 May, 2021]
Guest-Editor: Roshni Sengupta, Assistant Professor, Institute of Middle and Far East Studies, Jagiellonian University Krakow, Poland.
Concept Note: A master of his craft, a remarkable auteur ahead of his times, the creator of a unenviable cinematic canvas, a filmmaker, writer, artist of immense reach and range, Satyajit Ray re-defined neo-realism in art and form, brought it alive on screen and portended a legacy of brilliant work that subsequent generations have been attempting tirelessly to define and categorise without much success. Ray is therefore the ultimate indefinable genius.
The special commemorative issue of Café Dissensus will attempt to understand and revisit Ray’s immense range of work – from pathbreaking films to books to the astonishingly everyman crime-busting hero, Feluda, he managed to make immortal. With the focus on his genre-defying cinematic productions, the issue will also bring together writings on Ray as a multi-faceted and consummate artist. Beginning from the pristine canvas of Pather Panchali which – in more ways than one – inaugurated realism in Indian cinema of the age to the aristocratic charm of Charulata which immortalized Tagore’s supremely etched characters on celluloid and the edgy, intensely political violence of the Calcutta Trilogy, Ray’s range of work remains unmatched, paralleled perhaps only by his contemporaries Ritwik Ghatak and Mrinal Sen. The issue also seeks to examine the politics of Ray’s cinema as well as his personal politics, his inspirations from European realism and neo-realism and his contribution to neo-noir literature.
Contributors might like to elaborate on the following:
- Impact of European realism on Ray’s films
- The “everyman” in Ray’s cinema
- Ray’s foray into Hindi cinema
- The making of Pather Panchali
- Apu Trilogy and the question of genre in Bengali film
- Ray as the master of filmmaking
- Reflections on Ray’s writings on cinema
- Politics and the Calcutta Trilogy
- Ray as a genre-bending storyteller
- Ray and his fiction
- Ray and his contemporaries – a comparison
- Ray and Kurosawa – the two filmic greats
Submission should be approximately 2000-2500 words. Please do provide a brief bio at the end of your piece. Since the magazine is geared toward non-academic readers, the citations within the body of the articles must be minimal, in the form of the name of an author or an idea, etc. The issue is planned for online publication on 2 May, 2021. Last date for submission: 31 March, 2021. Please email your submissions to rosh.sengupta@gmail.com
General Submission Guidelines:
1. We are ideologically neutral and invite submissions from the perspectives of all ideologies – right, center, left etc. – as long as a piece makes a reasoned argument.
2. While emailing your pieces, please write ‘Magazine Piece: Issue No.’ in the subject line. Send submissions and queries to email ids of individual guest editors listed with concept notes.
3. The pieces should be around 2000-2500 words. We are open to making exceptions to this rule, if a particular piece deserves more space.
4. We are open to audio-visual submissions (in the form of interviews, conversations etc.). The audio-visual files must not be more than 20 minutes in duration. Again, we are open to making exceptions to this rule in some cases.
5. We invite Photo Essays on the given topic of a particular issue. We will include a maximum of 15 photos in a Photo Essay.
6. In case the authors are making submissions to multiple magazines, blogs, and newspapers, they must inform Cafe Dissensus the moment the piece is accepted elsewhere. Once Cafe Dissensus accepts a piece and starts working on it, it cannot be published in another magazine, blog, and newspaper.
7. The materials on Cafe Dissensus are protected under Creative Commons License. Once a piece is published in Cafe Dissensus, we will retain exclusive copyright for a period of 30 days, from the date of publication. Within this period, the piece cannot be re-published elsewhere even in an adapted and modified form.Thereafter, it must be acknowledged that the piece was first published in Cafe Dissensus. Failing to comply with this and any unauthorized republication/reproduction of the piece will invite legal measures and prosecution.
8. We are a completely voluntary endeavor and we are unable to pay our authors.
Guidelines for Guest-Editing an Issue:
We invite our readers, teachers, scholars, students, journalists/media professionals, activists, professionals (practically, anyone who would like to!) to guest-edit an issue of Cafe Dissensus. Here are the guidelines for guest-editing an issue:
1. The Guest-Editor must send in a 150 word concept note/call for papers to the editors (Email: infocafedissensus@gmail.com) well in advance, describing the theme of the issue (along with raising some questions). We will put up the CFP/concept note on the magazine website and on the magazine social-media pages.
2.There must be at least 15-18 articles plus the guest-editorial.
3. Each article must be between 2000-2500 words. However, the guest-editor might include a few longer essays, if she/he feels necessary.
4. Since the magazine is geared toward non-academic readers, all footnotes and references must be taken out. The citations within the body of the articles must be minimal, in the form of the name of an author or an idea etc. Please keep this readability factor in mind while soliciting articles and editing them.
5. We expect at least some of the pieces to be personal narratives, wherever possible. One of our aims is to weave the personal with the public/political.
6. Audio-visual content is one of our distinctive features. The guest-editors must include at least 3-4 audio-visual interviews, conversations etc. in the edited issue. For example, interviews and conversations recorded as audio-video or audio. We can help with the logistics of recording and editing the content.
7. The guest-editor will be in charge of collecting, selecting, and editing the articles. All articles will go through a final-edit by the Editors of the magazine.
8. The guest-editor must write an 800-1000 word editorial.