M.K. Binodini Devi Memorial Lecture: Transcript of Samik Bandyopadhyaya's Lecture on Indian Regional Cinema and Binodini

1st M.K. Binodini Devi Memorial Lecture

Samik Bandyopadhyaya: Cinema Across Cultures

6 February 2013, Imphal, Manipur

Samik Bandyopadhyay is a film and theatre critic was a long-time friend and associate of M. K. Binodini Devi. Perhaps the most eminent critic of Manipur’s arts and culture Samik has been at the forefront of bringing an understanding and appreciation of the work of artists like Aribam Syam Sharma and Ratan Thiyam to the world outside Manipur. He is a Visiting Fellow (Professor) at the School of Arts and Aesthetics in Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi. He received an M.A. in English Literature from Calcutta University and served as a Lecturer in Departments of English Literature and Drama at Rabindra Bharati University. He was Regional Editor for Oxford University Press in Calcutta and later, Editor for Seagull Books.

Samik was Producer Emeritus for All India Radio and Doordarshan and a Research Professor at Asiatic Society in Calcutta in the 1990s. He has been a panelist at seminars on Indian Theatre as part of Festivals of India in USSR and Germany and Vice-Chairman for the National School of Drama (2006-2010) and member of the National School of Drama Society.

He has lectured extensively in the USA, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and England and gave a series of lectures on Indian cinema at Pittsburgh University in 1988; a seminar on Indian Culture for Brown University in 1990; and the Donald Charlton lecture, organized by the Humanities Research Centre at Warwick University in November 2010. 

Samik has translated plays and fiction by Badal Sircar and Mahasweta Devi; contributed introductions to plays by Vijay Tendulkar, Mahesh Elkunchwar, G. P. Deshpande, Satish Alekar; and reconstructed for publication film scripts for films made by Shyam Benegal, Mrinal Sen and Aribam Syam Sharma. Samik is the Founder-Editor of Thema, a small publisher based in Calcutta. He is also visiting faculty at an annual film appreciation course organized by the National Film Archives of India and the Film and Television Institute of India, Pune. 

He has contributed several essays in numerous film and theatre periodicals in English and Bengali. He has interviewed Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen, Mahasweta Devi, Richard Attenborough, Natalie Sarraute, Salman Rushdie, Derek Malcolm, Reinhard Hauff, Aribam Syam Sharma and Ratan Thiyam.etc. for Film Society periodicals and All India Radio and Doordarshan; several of these later included in books.

He is based in Kolkata.