Conceived as the second installment of an unfinished trilogy of dramatic shorts entitled “Tales of Little People,” Sengalese filmmaker Mambety created this luminous portrait of a young handicapped girl named Sili and her determination to be a street vendor of Le Soleil, the national newspaper of Senegal. The Little Girl Who Sold The Sun is at once a tribute to the indomitable spirit of the street children of Dakar and an allegory of the force of the individual’s capacity to transform her situation.

Ray believed that the scenario for his first film, adapted from the popular novel by Bhibuti Bashan Bannerjee, could serve to establish a new artistic cinema for India. Inspired by Italian Neorealism, the films of Jean Renoir, and the work of writer/philosopher Rabindranath Tagore, Pather Panchali tells the story of a poor Bengali scholar and writer and his wife and two children. Making wonderful use of exteriors and of professional and non-professional actors, who seem inseparable from the characters they play, the film provides a penetrating look into family life and especially the world of the children, who venture out to discover the wonders and difficulties of life, the pettiness of humanity, and the violence of nature.