About the Director Buddhadeb Dasgupta was born in 1944 in Anara, India.
Bengali poet and director, Dasgupta was a lecturer in economics at Calcutta
University. Many of his poems have been published in various journals.His
poeticism has been extended to cinema as well. Dasgupta won several national
awards and a special jury prize for directing at 2000 Venice International
Film Festival for 'The Wrestlers'(Uttara).Many people dream but only a few
have the courage and drive to follow their dreams with conviction and turn
them into reality. Dreams of ordinary men and women that is the stuff
Buddhadeb Dasgupta s films are made of and that is what gives them their
global appeal. Buddhadeb s cinema is also about journeys and of
loneliness.Buddhadeb s romance with the camera began during his college days
when his association with the film society opened his eyes to the world of
cinema as a form of self-expression through images and poetry. His membership
of the Calcutta Film Society exposed him to the films of Charlie Chaplin,
Ingmar Bergman, Akira Kurosawa, Vittorio De Sica, Roberto Rossellini and
Antonioni, triggering within him, a secret dream to make films himself.For
Dasgupta, cinema at its best is somewhere between poetry and music. It is this
sublime poetic vision that has made Dasgupta one of India s most influential
and sophisticated filmmakers today. Hiss directorial debut came almost 20
years back with Dooratwa (The Distance), where he explored the role of the
radical progressive Indian middle-class and its inherent contradictions and
confusions. In a similar vein were Grihajuddha (The Crossroads) and Andhi Gali
(The Blind Alley). The three were dubbed a trilogy. In Neen Annapurna (Bitter
Morsel), Dasgupta depicted the ruthless growth of dehumanisation and
lumpenisatin that has been going on behind the giltter of progress,
development and urbanisation.He was honoured with the Lifetime Achievement
Award at the Spain International Film Festival on May 27. A retrospective of
six of his films: Charachar, Bagh Bahadur, Mondo Meyer Upakhyan, Kaalpurush
and Lal Darja, was also a part of the film festival.