Spandan Banerjee | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 2 April 1973 |
| Nationality | Indian |
| Education | Bachelor's degree, St Xavier's College, Kolkata |
| Occupation | Director/ Filmmaker |
| Parent(s) | Mr M.K Banerjee and Kabita Banerjee |
Spandan Banerjee is an Indian independent filmmaker. He is the Founder of Overdose Films Pvt. Ltd. He was born in Kolkata, and finished his undergraduate studies from St. Xavier's College, Kolkata, India.
His interest in art started early from being a young cartoonist for The Statesman in 1990's Kolkata to designing for the Satyajit Ray Society. He started his advertising career at Response India, Kolkata and subsequently BBDO and McCann, until he quit to make films under the banner of Overdose Films. He was one of the six shortlisted for the British Council Young Creative Entrepreneur Award in the SCREEN category.[ citation needed ] His other advertising work includes Horlicks, Incredible India, British High Commission, National Geographic Channel Films, Goethe Institute, Pratham, UNICEF and more. He has also directed video clips for the 'Tandanu' album featuring Shankar Mahadevan, Vishal Dadlani, Shubha Mudgal, Indian Ocean, Kumaresh, Grammy Award winner Pandit Vishwamohan Bhatt and Selvaganesh. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]
His independent films including the National Award-winning You Don't Belong, and To-Let (Best Doc IDSFFK 2013) have been highly acclaimed. His earlier film Beware Dogs (World Premiere IFFR 2008) was one of a kind and one of the first music documentaries from India. [7] His films have a distinct style and language and have often been compared to jazz in its form. [8] [9] [10]
| Year | Film | Director | Producer | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2006 | Track2 | Yes | Yes | 6 mins. Official Selection: Festival Cine International de Barcelona, 2007 |
| 2006 | Thekey Pe Kya Kartey Ho? | Yes | Yes | 6 mins. Official Selection: VISCULT 2007, Finland, Girona Film Festival 2007, Spain & KARA Film Festival 2007–09, Pakistan |
| 2008 | Beware Dogs | Yes | Yes | World Premiere: International Film Festival, Rotterdam 2008. Off. Selection: Festival of International Films on Art (FIFA), Montreal 2008, Barcelona Asian Film Festival (BAFF), Barcelona 2008, Portobello Film Festival, London 2008, MIAAC 2008, New York |
| 2011 | You Don't Belong | Yes | Yes | 75 mins. "Special Jury" at the 59th National Films Awards, 2012, India; INDIAN PANORAMA at the 42nd International Film Festival of India (IFFI 2011), Goa; Special Jury at the 4th IDSFFK 2011, Kerala. US Premiere: New York Indian Film Festival, NY, 2011. You Don't Belong Film Festival, China 2012 |
| 2013 | To-Let | Yes | Yes | 65 mins. 'Best Long Documentary' at the 6th IDSFFK 2013, Kerala. USA Premiere: New York Indian Film Festival, NY, 2013 |
| 2015 | City Of Dark | Yes | Fiction Feature (85 mins. under post-production) | |
| 2015 | English India | Yes | (75 mins/ Doc) WORLD PREMIERE, HOTDOCS Toronto 2015, IDSFFK, Kerala 2015, Long list for nomination Asia Pacific Screen Awards 2015. |
You Don't belong is a 2011 music documentary that follows a popular 80's Bengali song known as traditional and locates the author of the song. Myth and memory, folk and copyright, home and migration are the larger narratives emerging from the journey of a song from the margins into the urban mainstream.
The song was first popularized during the emergence of Bengali bands interspersing rock and folk to capture contemporary displaced realities. Reproduced and distributed by the flourishing recording industry as representative of the folk traditions of Bengal. Traveling across known and remembered lands, following the unseen path of migration that music takes, You Don't Belong asks some important questions about the encounter between art and mass production, creation and ownership in a country of myriad folk and oral traditions.
The Jury citation of To-Let by IDSFFK states, much like a jazz jam, the film takes us on a journey through the plight of the modern urban nomad in search of a home in a modern-day Delhi. Drawing on a mosaic of all too familiar situations, the director creates a funny and poignant ballad that really grooves.
Rotterdam Film Festival calls Beware Dogs (2008) a poetic and exciting documentary on the contemporary music group Indian Ocean. The film depicts the creative struggle of four musicians who are together on their artistic journey, sharing their inner joy, fears, laughs, thoughts and putting it all in their songs. With a lyrical, rather slow pace, yet in a cinema vérité manner, the film shares with us the excitement and the inner battle of the process of creating music. [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] You Don't Belong is an exquisite black and white journey into nostalgia, myth and memory, folk and copyright, home and migration felt through a song. [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] [25]
Victor Banerjee is an Indian actor who appears in English, Hindi, Bengali and Assamese language films. He has worked for directors such as Roman Polanski, James Ivory, Sir David Lean, Jerry London, Ronald Neame, Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen, Shyam Benegal, Montazur Rahman Akbar and Ram Gopal Varma. He won the National Film Award for Best Supporting Actor for the film Ghare Baire. He was awarded the Padma Bhushan, India's third highest civilian award, in 2022 by the Indian Government in the field of art.
Indian Ocean is an Indian rock band formed in New Delhi in 1990, who are widely recognized as the pioneers of the fusion rock genre in India. Susmit Sen, Asheem Chakravarty, Rahul Ram and Amit Kilam were band members until Chakravarty died on 25 December 2009, after which Tuheen Chakravorty and Himanshu Joshi were officially inducted into the band as successors. After the departure of Susmit Sen in 2013, Rahul Ram is the only founding member who appeared on the band's debut album Indian Ocean. Sanjeev Sharma has collaborated with them as lyricist on many albums.
Salil Chowdhury was an Indian music director, songwriter, lyricist, writer and poet who predominantly composed for Bengali, Hindi and Malayalam films. He composed music for films in 13 languages. This includes over 75 Hindi films, 41 Bengali films, 27 Malayalam films, and a few Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Gujarati, Odia and Assamese films. His musical ability was widely recognised and acknowledged in the Indian film industry. He was an accomplished composer and arranger who was proficient in several musical instruments, including flute, the piano, and the esraj. He was also widely acclaimed and admired for his inspirational and original poetry in Bengali.
Moheener Ghoraguli was an Indian rock group from Kolkata, established in 1975. Their music drew from wide variety of influences, including Bengali folk, Baul, urban American folk, and jazz. They sometimes described their style as "Baul jazz."
Indian rock is a music genre in India that may incorporate elements of Indian music with rock music, and is often topically India-centric. While India is more often known for its classical music, filmi, Bollywood music, Indi-pop, and Bhangra, the Indian rock scene has also produced numerous bands and artists.
Indian People's Theatre Association (IPTA) is the oldest association of theatre-artists in India. IPTA was formed in 1943 during the British rule in India, and promoted themes related to the Indian freedom struggle. Its goal was to bring cultural awakening among the people of India.
Krosswindz is a Bengali rock/folk-fusion band, based in Kolkata, India. They have played all over India and abroad, and have helped urbanize the folk music of Bengal and have tried to make it popular. Krosswindz is one of the few Kolkata based Bengali rock bands who have female singers in their lead vocals.
The culture of West Bengal is an Indian culture which has its roots in Bengali literature, music, fine arts, drama and cinema. Different geographic regions of West Bengal have subtle as well as more pronounced variations between each other, with Darjeeling Himalayan hill region and Duars showing particularly different socio-cultural aspects.
Kaushiki Chakraborty is an Indian classical vocalist and a composer. She attended Sangeet Research Academy, and was one of the exponents of Patiala gharana. Her repertoire covers pure classical, Khyals, Dadras, Thumris etc. and several other forms of Indian music. She is the recipient 2005 BBC Radio 3 Awards for World Music in the Asia-Pacific category. She is the daughter of Hindustani classical vocalist, Ajoy Chakraborty and she has held performances with him as well as her husband, Parthasarathi Desikan. In 2020, she was awarded Nari Shakti Puraskar. Kaushiki is also a trained Carnatic Classical Vocalist.
Sanjay Rajoura is a stand-up comedian. He is a part of trio of "Aisi Taisi Democracy.
Tanmoy Bose, whose name is often preceded by the title Pandit (Master), is an India percussionist and tabla player, musical producer, film actor and composer. He has collaborated with Pandit Ravi Shankar, Anoushka Shankar and Amjad Ali Khan, and created the musical group The Taal Tantra Experience in 2002.
Kanu Behl is an Indian film director and screenwriter. He is known for his work in Hindi cinema.
Vipin Vijay is an Indian film director and screenwriter. He received his post-graduate degree in filmmaking from the Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute SRFTI, Calcutta. He received the Charles Wallace Arts Award for research at the British Film Institute, London, 2003. Vipin is the recipient of "The Sanskriti Award" (2007) for social & cultural achievement. His works are made under independent codes and defy any categorisation eluding all traditional genre definitions and merge experimental film, documentary, essay, fiction all into one.
Sanjib Sarkar is an Indian sound designer, music director and film score composer
Varun Grover is an Indian writer, comedian, poet and filmmaker. He won the award for Best Lyricist at the 63rd National Film Awards in 2015. He is also the co-creator of Aisi Taisi Democracy, a political satire show. His debut feature All India Rank was the closing film at the 52nd IFFR.
The Unbearable Being of Lightness is a 45-minute documentary film made in 2016 and directed by Ramchandra PN. The documentary documents a workshop that the filmmaker had conducted for a group of students at the University of Hyderabad, immediately after the student protests on the issue of the suicide of Rohith Vemula had ended at the university.
Arko Mukherjee, popularly known by his artist name, Arko Mukhaerjee, is an Indian singer, playback singer and an urban folk musician from Calcutta, India. He sings folk songs in various languages including Bengali and Nepali. The singer can sing in more than 20 languages and plays five different instruments. He sings folk music to blues, soul and several tribal music forms from different parts of the world. He researches on the roots of folk and contemporary music by travelling around different parts of the world as Europe, America, Bangladesh and Nepal.
Supriyo Sen is an independent filmmaker from India. He produced and directed the film Tangra Blues (2021).
Jaimin Rajani is a singer-songwriter and documentary filmmaker from Calcutta, India. He writes songs into the traditions of folk and rock music. As a producer, Jaimin has worked on the albums ‘Then & Now’ (2020) by Susmit Bose and ‘White Knight's Tale’ (2019) by High.
