Chandrabati Kotha is a 2019 Bengali biographical drama film directed by N. Rashed Chowdhury. The movie is based on the life of Chandravati, first feminist poet of Bengal. [1]
The film premiered at the 2019 Kolkata International Film Festival. [1] [2] This movie has been selected for the international category for the Asia Pacific Screen Awards. [3] [4]
The story revolves around the elegiac life of Chandrabati, 16th century woman poet of Bengali language. She is best known for her women-centered epic Ramayana. Her father Dijabangshi Das was also a poet. Chandrabati falls in love with another poet, Jayananda but he leaves her for another woman. Heartbroken Chandrabati confines herself inside a Shiva temple and starts rewriting the Ramayana. [1]
Aparna Sen is an Indian film director, screenwriter and actress who is known for her work in Bengali cinema. She has received several accolades as an actress and filmmaker, including nine National Film Awards, five Filmfare Awards East and thirteen Bengal Film Journalists' Association Awards. For her contribution in the field of arts, the Government of India honoured her with Padma Shri, the country's fourth highest civilian award.
Suchitra Sen (Bengali pronunciation:[ʃuːtʃiːraːʃeːn] ; born Roma Dasgupta, widely known as the Mahanayika, was an Indian actress who worked in Bengali and Hindi cinema. The movies in which she was paired opposite Uttam Kumar became classics in the history of Bengali cinema.
Nabaneeta Dev Sen was an Indian writer and academic. After studying arts and comparative literature, she moved to the US where she studied further. She returned to India and taught at several universities and institutes as well as serving in various positions in literary institutes. She published more than 80 books in Bengali: poetry, novels, short stories, plays, literary criticism, personal essays, travelogues, humour writing, translations and children's literature. She was awarded the Padma Shri in 2000 and the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1999.
Tista Das or Teesta Das is an Indian transgender rights activist, actress and writer from the Indian state of West Bengal. She has acted in several Hindi and Bengali films.
Roopa Ganguly is an Indian actress, playback singer and politician. She is best known for her portrayal of Draupadi in B R Chopra's hit television series Mahabharat. Often promoted as the Tollywood's answer to Bollywood's Shabana Azmi, she is known for her versatility and accent adaptation. She has worked with directors such as Mrinal Sen, Aparna Sen, Goutam Ghose and Rituparno Ghosh. She is a trained Rabindra Sangeet vocalist and a classical dancer. She received several awards including a National Award and two BFJA Awards. In October 2016, she was nominated as a Member of Parliament, Rajya Sabha, by the President of India. She served as the President of BJP Mahila Morcha in West Bengal. She served as the General Secretary and the Vice-President for the West Bengal Motion Picture Artistes' Forum, a body representing cine artistes. Her films have commulatively grossed more than US$100 million worldwide.
Cinema of West Bengal, also known as Tollywood or Bengali cinema, is an Indian film industry of Bengali-language motion pictures. It is based in the Tollygunge region of Kolkata, West Bengal, India. The origins of the nickname Tollywood, a portmanteau of the words Tollygunge and Hollywood, dates back to 1932. It was a historically important film industry, at one time the centre of Indian film production. The Bengali film industry is known for producing many of Indian cinema's most critically acclaimed global Parallel Cinema and art films, with several of its filmmakers gaining prominence at the Indian National Film Awards as well as international acclaim.
Sob Charitro Kalponik,( transl. All Characters are Imaginary; also known as Afterword) is a 2009 Bengali film by Rituparno Ghosh starring Bipasha Basu, Prosenjit Chatterjee and Jisshu Sengupta. It was selected for the 30th Durban International Film Festival and won National Film Award for Best Feature Film in Bengali 2009. It was screened in the Marché du Film section of the 2009 Cannes Film Festival.
Bappaditya Bandopadhyay was an Indian film director and poet.
Suman Mukherjee is an Indian film director.His popular films are Herbert (film), Kangal Malsat, Shesher Kobita (2014).
Ranjan Ghosh is a Bengali filmmaker based out of Kolkata, India. He had risen to prominence with the release of Aparna Sen's Bengali feature film Iti Mrinalini, by becoming the first and the only screenwriter, the acclaimed actor-director had collaborated with in her illustrious career till date. With this film, Ghosh had made his screenwriting debut. He made his directorial debut in 2014 with the critically acclaimed Hrid Majharey, a Bengali feature film starring Abir Chatterjee and Raima Sen. Inspired by certain iconic plays of William Shakespeare, it was the first film in the Bengali language based on the works of the Bard and was presented as a tribute on his 450th Birth Anniversary. His second film Rongberonger Korhi was an anthology of four short films woven around the theme of money and its relationship with human beings. It featured National Award-winning actor Rituparna Sengupta, veteran cine star Chiranjeet Chakraborty, critically acclaimed actors Ritwick Chakraborty, Soham Chakraborty, Kharaj Mukherjee, Arunima Ghosh, Arjun Chakrabarty and others. It became a widely acclaimed film on release in 2018, before doing the festival rounds in Dubai, Dhaka, London, and nationally at Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Pune and Hyderabad. In 2019, Ghosh released his third feature film, the hugely successful Ahaa Re featuring Bangladeshi actor Arifin Shuvoo, Rituparna Sengupta, Amrita Chattopadhyay, Paran Bandopadhyay, Deepankar De, Shakuntala Barua, Bangladeshi Cinema film actor Alamgir in a special appearance as a restaurant owner. The film made it to a coveted list of 25 all-time great Asian films about food, compiled by international film web magazine Asian Movie Pulse. Ghosh's fourth feature film Mahishasur Marddini - A Night to Remember featuring his muse Rituparna Sengupta along with Saswata Chatterjee, Parambrata Chattopadhyay and a bunch of young theatre actors, released in 2022 and is touted as his boldest work till date in which he experiments with form and style, combining the elements of theatre and cinema. The film was screened at the Film and Television Institute of India, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Jamia Millia Islamia, University of Hyderabad, English and Foreign Languages University, University of Kerala, SNDT Women's University, Pondicherry University, IIT Bombay, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Kolkata and Tata Institute of Social Sciences. The Indian People's Theatre Association, Kollam District Committee, Kerala, screened the film in August 2023. Earlier, it became the first Indian feature film to screen at any theatre festival anywhere in India when it played at the 21st Habitat Theatre Festival, 2022, organized by the India Habitat Centre, New Delhi.
Chandrabati was a medieval Bengali poet, widely considered as the first known female poet of Bengali language. She is best known for her women-centered epic Ramayana.
Rafiath Rashid Mithila is a Bangladeshi actress, singer and development worker known professionally by the mononym Mithila. Besides her film work in both Bangladesh and Kolkata, India, she is the head of the Early Childhood Development programme in BRAC International.
Churni Ganguly is an Indian actress and director who mainly works in Bengali movies and television productions. She received the Bengal Film Journalists' Association Awards in 2005 in the best actress category for the movie Waarish, in which she played a single-mother's role. She won two National Film Awards for her directorial ventures Nirbashito and Tarikh.
Television is a 2012 Bangladeshi drama film based on changing social values and adoption of technology directed by Mostofa Sarwar Farooki and starring Kazi Shahir Huda Rumi, Chanchal Chowdhury, Mosharraf Karim, and Tisha. The film was selected as the Bangladeshi entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 86th Academy Awards.
Nandita Roy is an Indian filmmaker and screenwriter. She made her directorial debut with the film Icche (2011) along with her co-director Shiboprosad Mukherjee. The two have also directed Accident, Muktodhara, Alik Sukh, Ramdhanu, Bela Seshe, Haami, Praktan, Posto (film), Konntho, Gotro. She has been a part of several projects and has worked with many renowned directors.
Sudeshna Roy is an Indian film director, actor and writer based in Tollywood. She started her career as an entertainment journalist before collaborating with the director Abhijit Guha and foraying into the film industry. She is a popular artist in the Bangla Entertainment Industry. Besides directing films, she acted in several films, daily soaps and web series. The duo debuted with their first film Shudhu Tumi, and then they made several films in varied genres. However, they are known to make urban middle-class romantic comedy films. They worked with Abir Chatterjee, who debuted in their film Cross Connection in 2009. They came into prominence after their critically acclaimed film Teen Yaari Kotha. Teen Yaari Katha was showcased in the competition section of Osian's Cinefan Festival of Asian and Arab Cinema in 2012. It travelled to the Bangkok International Film as well as Kolkata International Film Festival. Their film Bapi bari jaa is considered a cult classic among the Bangla film lovers. It also marked the debut of Arjun Chakraborty and MP Mimi Chakraborty in the Bangla film industry.
Indrasis Acharya is an Indian film director working in Bengali cinema. He came to the prominence after directing his first feature film, Bilu Rakkhosh which won acclaim in both national and international sphere. Indrasis next worked in Pupa which got rave reviews and won many awards and accolades including All India Critic Choice Award for Best Bengali film of 2018. It was in Hanoi international, Kolkata international film festivals and many more. Pupa won multiple awards and accolades around the globe including, Best Director and Best film awards. His third film was The Parcel for which he won the Best Director award at the 25th Kolkata International Film Festival.
Abhijit Guha is an Indian film director, actor and writer working in the Tollywood film industry. Guha and Sudeshna Roy have worked together in the field of audio visuals since 1994. The duo debuted with their first film Shudhu Tumi and then they made several films in varied genres. They've given Tollywood one of its biggest stars — Abir Chatterjee, who debuted in their film Cross Connection in 2009. They came into prominence after their critically acclaimed film Teen Yaari Kotha. It's a story of personal struggles and friendship of three lower-middle-class men. Teen Yaari Katha was showcased in the competition section of Osian's Cinefan Festival of Asian and Arab Cinema in 2012. It travelled to the Bangkok International Film as well as Kolkata International Film Festival.Their film Bapi bari jaa is considered as cult classic among the Bangla film lovers for its coming of age storyline and relatable characters. It also marked the debut of Arjun Chakraborty and MP Mimi Chakraborty in Bangla film industry.
The 24th Kolkata International Film Festival took place from 10 Nov 2018 – 17 Nov 2018. Celebrating 100 Years of Bengali cinema, Around 171 films and 150 short and documentary films from 70 countries was screened at the festival.
Chitrangada Satarupa is an Indian actress who appears predominantly in Hindi and Bengali cinema. She is known for starring in the critically acclaimed films Tikli and Laxmi Bomb (2017), Tottaa Pataaka Item Maal (2018) and Devi Aur Hero (2019).