An Interview with Dilip K. Basu

[Dr. Dilip K. Basu, professor emeritus of History at the University of California, Santa Cruz, is the founding director of the Satyajit Ray Film and Study Center, now located in Crown College on the UCSC campus. He and his wife, Dayani Kowshik-Basu, who serves as curator for the Center, continue to maintain, direct, and develop the Ray archival collection and oversee the continuing restoration efforts of a range of Satyajit Ray materials. Dilip Basu has played one of the most vital roles, worldwide, in the recovery and restoration of Satyajit Ray’s films. In 1992, when the Motion Picture Academy, with Audrey Hepburn at the microphone, presented Satyajit Ray with an Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement, it was Dilip Basu who had brought the Oscar from California to Calcutta to personally present it to Ray and who (just off camera) assisted the critically ill Ray to hold the award in his hands as he addressed the Academy and mass television audience via satellite link from his Calcutta hospital bed.