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A Bid for Bengal
A Film Following Recent Political Shifts in the State
Speakers
70 mins | Documentary | India | 2021 | Bangla, English, Hindi | English subtitles
Directed by Dwaipayan Banerjee and Kasturi Basu
How did Hindu-Nationalist (HN) politics find a foothold in West Bengal after all these decades? Using fresh and archival footage with personal family history, A Bid for Bengal lays bare historical fault lines and visits the workings of frontal organizations in the HN network responsible for the recent political shift in West Bengal, in between witnessing two consecutive elections trails, from 2019 to 2021. As resistance takes shape, one arrives at the immediate present marred with anxiety, yet not bereft of hope.
The screening will be followed by a discussion between Madhu Bhushan and the directors of the film, Dwaipayan Banerjee and Kasturi Basu. There will be a Q&A session following the discussion.
In collaboration with:
Speakers
Dwaipayan Banerjee
Dwaipayan Banerjee is an independent documentary filmmaker, activist, writer and editor based in Kolkata. An alumnus of Presidency College and Calcutta University, he has formerly been a labour activist and labour history researcher.
Banerjee is a founder-member of the People’s Film Collective and People’s Study Circle, co-organiser of the Kolkata People’s Film Festival, and co-editor of ‘Pratirodher Cinema’, a Bengali journal on documentary cinema and counterculture. He has co-edited the volume, ‘Towards a People’s Cinema: Independent Documentary and its Audience in India‘ (2018), published by Three Essays Collective, New Delhi. Banerjee researched and wrote the feature-length documentary ‘S.D.: Saroj Dutta and His Times’ (2018). ‘A Bid for Bengal‘ (2021) is his debut feature-length documentary as a director.
Kasturi Basu
Kasturi Basu is an independent documentary filmmaker, activist, writer and editor based in Kolkata. By training, she is a physicist, an alumnus of Jadavpur University, University of Cambridge, and Rutgers – the State University of New Jersey. Basu is a founder-member of the People’s Film Collective, co-organiser of the Kolkata People’s Film Festival, and co-editor of ‘Pratirodher Cinema’, a Bengali journal on documentary cinema and counterculture. Basu has co-edited the volume, ‘Towards a People’s Cinema: Independent Documentary and its Audience in India‘ (2018), published by Three Essays Collective, New Delhi. Her filmography as a director includes feature-length documentaries ‘S.D.: Saroj Dutta and His Times‘ (2018) and ‘A Bid for Bengal‘ (2021).
Madhu Bhushan
Madhu Bhushan worked as a women’s rights activist at Vimochana, a part of SIEDS (Society for Informal Education and Development Studies). While involved with crisis intervention, community outreach, campaigns and advocacy with a focus on rural and tribal communities, she has also been writing and speaking on diverse issues related to gender, cinema, communalism and human rights.
She is currently an independent activist – writer, (re) searcher and very occasional film maker, she continues to be closely associated with SIEDS and its gender initiative, Gamana Mahila Samuha, a feminist collective. She is also associated with various networks and organisations working on human rights and social justice including rights of sex workers, trans communities and adivasis.
