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Sounds. Hello and thank you for downloading the podcast of Witness History from the BBC World Service.

All this week we're looking back at landmark moments in the history of film.

Today we're going back to 1955 and the release of

Botar Banjali, the first film by the acclaimed Bengali director Satajid Ray.

It's the opening part of the Opu trilogy about a boy growing up in rural Bengal and it was to become

the archetypal picture of life in an Indian village. What made him so special is his poetic and lyrical vision. You know, his films are so sensitive. I mean you can almost palpably touch them

those people on the screen.

Jomitra Chateju was a young man at the time of the release of Boteli which translates a song of the little road.

He remembers the effect it had on him and his friends.

We were a bunch of young friends together.

We all went and saw this film.

I remember about one friend of mine who has never seen Potter Machéry in totality because every time

halfway through he used to start crying so much that he would not he could not see the rest of the film.

The story of the boy opu was a far cry from the sorts of films being made in India at the

time, Bollywood's trademark musicals and melodramas.

Filmed in black and white, the films tell the story of three generations of a poor Brahmin family.

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