Recently ECTA presented a one man show, “Banijye Basate Lakshmi”, a play written and performed by Sudipta Bhawmik, and directed by Sankar Ghoshal. Gagan Goswami, a motivational speaker, talks to his audience and inspires them to be successful in business. In a ninety minute long speech, Gagan chronicles his colorful journey as a Bengali entrepreneur seeking the answer to the most important question of one’s life – Why?
New Jersey Independent South Asian Cinefest (www.NJISACF.org), 2011 that recently concluded at the Big Cinemas in Edison New Jersey announced the award winners at a special event. The 2011 award winners are:
Best Student Film: Aadmi Ki Aurat Aur Anya Kahaniya (Directed by Amit Dutta and produced by FTII, Pune)
Best Production by a Woman: Sunanda Shetty for Desire Of a Woman
Best Background Score: Pt. Vishwa Mohan Bhatt (Desire of a Woman)
Best Documentary (feature length): Inshallah Football directed by Ashvin Kumar
Critic’s Choice Award (for a film): Flying Fish directed by Sanjeewa Pushapkumara
Outstanding Debut Feature ( both male & female): Meherjaan directed by Rubaiyat Hossain, produced by Ashique Mustafa
Best Actor (Male): Rajat Kapoor (I am 24) and Adil Hussain (GANGOR)
Best Actor (Female): Priyanka Bose (Gangor) and Humaima Malik (Bol)
Best Directorial Debut By a Woman: Anjali Menon for Lucky Red Seeds
Best Director (feature): Shoaib Mansoor (Bol), Italo Spinelli (Gangor)
Best Director (Female): Rubaiyat Hossain (Meherjaan)
Best Feature: Gangor directed by Italo Spinelli, produced by Niravana Entertainments and Bibi Films (Italy)
The Department of African, Middle Eastern and South Asian Languages and Literatures at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey State (New Brunswick Campus) has an opening for a part-time Instructor of Bengali for 2011-2012 Academic year. Qualifications include: Native or near-native proficiency in Bengali, experience in teaching Bengali (preferably in a North American university) and competence in communicative, l earner-centered language pedagogy.
Please forward your CV, cover letter, and the names and contact information of three referees to Professor Alamin Mazrui, Department Chair, at amazrui@rci.rutgers.edu.
My play, “The Redemption” (the English version of “KaalSuddhi”) is now available for viewing on YouTube. This recording was done from our show at the Dixon Place in Manhattan during the 2005 New York International Fringe Festival.
Here is a small synopsis of the play:
This play is about Subimal who, once an active naxalite, had to flee his own country and come to America in search of a new life. Although Subimal did find a new life for himself, his past always haunted him, a past which he had always kept a deep secret. Suddenly, one day this secret starts to reveal itself to his son Somu from a long lost diary. Somu, a Harvard junior, is extremely curious to know the details of his father’s past, wants to know more about the Naxalite movement. But he never could have guessed the kind of murky and deep waters he is getting into. Subimal tried to prevent the inevitable, but his failure to do so ultimately leads him to his redemption.
Cast:
Sankar Ghoshal, Amitabh Roy, Mayuresh Khare, Keka Sircar
Anandabazar Patrika is Bengali’s most favorite daily newspaper. However, until recently reading Anandabazaar Patrika online was severely restricted due the technology it used to render the Bangla fonts. Only Internet Explorer supported the technology, but that too crashed frequently. But recently Anandabazar is available in Unicode and can be enjoyed in any Unicode compliant browser. Just click on the following link:
If you are interested, you may read a review of my collection of plays (Natak Samagra) in Parabaas.com 47th issue. The link is given below.
http://parabaas.com/PB47/LEKHA/brRajat47.html
Please note that your browser should be able to render dynamic font. Here is what Parabaas suggests if you cannot see Bangla fonts.
What you can do if the dynamic Bengali font is not rendered
1. If the URL shows as “http://parabaas.com/…”, try first by inserting a “www.” before “parabaas”–i.e. “http://www.parabaas.com/…”.
2. Download the itxbeng.ttf font and save it in the font directory of your computer. {To do that, (a) first download the font and save it, say, on the Desktop. (b) Click ‘Start’ -> ‘Control Panel’ -> ‘Fonts’ (c) “Drag and drop” (or “Copy and Paste”) the downloaded font from the “Desktop” (or wherever you have saved it) into the Fonts directory.)
3. From the Menubar in Microsoft Explorer choose ‘View’ -> ‘Encoding’ ->
‘User Defined’.
3a. If using Firefox browser, from the Menubar choose ‘View’ -> ‘Character Encoding’ -> one of the ‘Western (Windows)’ fonts displayed in the list.
4. On Netscape choose ‘Edit’ -> ‘Preferences’ -> ‘Appearence’ -> ‘Fonts’ ->
‘Use document specified fonts including dynamic fonts’.
5. Browsers older that Explorer 5.0 or Netscape 4.5 may not be able to
render dynamic fonts. Netscape 6.2 is also unable to render dynamic fonts.
If your browser is unable to render the Bengali font because of the above
reasons or due to a setting that intereferes with dynamic fonts, the easiest
remedy is to download the font ‘ItxBeng’ from this page and load it in your
computer.
A review of my collection of plays, “Natak Samagra” was recently published. Read them below.
Watched this wonderful film “Goodbye Lenin” by Wolfgang Becker. It may be relevant for Benglees (WB) soon.
Netflix link: http://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/Good_Bye_Lenin/60034095?trkid=2431210#height1682
Sometime ago, I had made few Facebook related cartoons that I had posted on Facebook. Let me post them here for those readers who are not on my Facebook friends list. Enjoy!
Cartoon 1: I’m unfriendly? My friend, I have more than 2000 friends on facebook and they never complain about my trash!
Cartoon 2: What can I say? This social media stuff has made him extremely unsocial.
Cartoon 3:
Cartoon 4:
