The Coffee House Experience

Amartya Bhattacharyya, a software engineer by profession, and a film-maker by passion likes to follow unconventional approaches in making films. He is a truly independent film-maker, who also does cinematography and editing (and even make-ups) in his films. His films contain unusual ideas, abstract narratives and unique subjects. His recent film "Adieu Godard" received worldwide accolades. In this conversation he opens up about his journey in cinema, his highly unconventional and unique approaches, aspects of "Adieu Godard", and his upcoming projects.

Trina Nileena Banerjee, erstwhile actor and currently a faculty member at CSSS Calcutta, joins us to discuss about the history of the theatre movement in Bengal. Within the said context, we double click on the gender politics of the movement to understand how the aesthetic representations of women on stage were often at odds with their role as cultural activists in the movement.

Trina's homepage: https://www.cssscal.org/faculty_trina_nileena_banerjee.php

Review of Trina's book: When Silence speaks https://www.epw.in/journal/2023/2/book-reviews/when-silence-speaks.html

Sayandeb Chowdhury, an academic by profession, explored the legacy of Uttam Kumar in his book "Uttam Kumar – A Life in Cinema". In this discussion he talks about the underlying research he pursued for the book, elaborates on many of his findings and provides his perspective on the present day's cultural vacuum in Bengali society.

Debarshi, an independent journalist, writer and film-maker attempts to demystify the absurdities of the contemporary language of art and culture.

Catherine Masud, along with life-partner Tareque Masud, left a lasting imprint on Bangladeshi cinema with works like Muktir Gaan, Muktir Kotha, and Matir Moina. Catherine’s long and intriguing journey took her from the United States to Bangladesh, just when the young country was waking up to a new dawn in films, steered by a new generation of young and talented filmmakers. She had a ringside view of, and was often an active participant in heralding that dawn. Join us as we talk to Catherine about her illustrious journey.

Catherine's current academic page at U Conn: https://humanrights.uconn.edu/person/catherine-masud/#

By trying to marry western-style liberal democracy with soviet-style central economic planning (that too, against the backdrop of Cold War politics), the first crop of leaders in independent India undertook a very bold experiment to say the least. The Planning Commission, with Prof PC Mahalanobis at its helm, was responsible for spearheading a lion's share of the allied efforts. While the whole construct might now seem like a relic of a past that grows more unfamiliar with every passing day, we can't refute the sway that these ideas held over the Indian conscience till the 1991 reforms upended this rather atypical consensus.

A new book by the University of Notre Dame historian Prof. Nikhil Menon, "Planning Democracy: How a Professor, An Institute, and an Idea Shaped India" documents how the zeal for central planning permeated every aspect of the average Indian's life in that era. He joins us in our latest episode to discuss this defining epoch of our nation's history.

Nikhil Menon's webpage: https://history.nd.edu/people/nikhil-menon/

Partha Banerjee has been inducted into RSS through his father at a very young age. However, in his early youth the ideological conflict between the RSS ideology and the liberal Bengali philosophy had started to bother him. Finally he raised a number of fundamental questions to the RSS leadership - as the answers remained unsatisfactory, he decided to quit the two decade long association and subsequently started to explore the other side of the political spectrum. Nevertheless, his long quest for a sensible political ideology remained highly unsatisfied until much later in his life when he travelled to the US and met Noam Chomsky, with whom he established a long association (Partha interviewed Noam five times and regularly communicates with him via emails). Partha, a PhD in biological science from US, ended up quitting science and spent much of his later life doing various activism in the US, most prominently organizing and educating the labors in and around New York City.

In this podcast he discusses his amazingly unique political journey with Pratyay, Srinjoy and Soumik. The episode spans over two sessions recorded in two separate days. Link to Partha Banerjee's Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partha_Banerjee

Sayantan Dutta is a film critic, who writes about Bangla Cinema in his blog. Recently, one of his write-ups, which criticizes the recent film Aparajito (2022) in a unique fashion, became viral in social media. In this episode he elaborated on his criticism of this film while extending that to contemporary Bangla Cinema and Society. This episode was hosted by Soumik, Pratyay and Srinjoy. Link for Saynatan's blog: https://sayantankatha.wordpress.com/

Link for Sayntan's write-up on Aparajito: https://sayantankatha.wordpress.com/2022/05/14/%e0%a6%85%e0%a6%a8%e0%a7%80%e0%a6%95-%e0%a6%a6%e0%a6%a4%e0%a7%8d%e0%a6%a4%e0%a7%87%e0%a6%b0-%e0%a6%85%e0%a6%aa%e0%a6%b0%e0%a6%be%e0%a6%9c%e0%a6%bf%e0%a6%a4-%e0%a6%85%e0%a6%a5%e0%a6%ac%e0%a6%be/

Saptarshi Mukherjee, a faculty of economics at IIT Delhi elaborately discusses Game Theory in political economy and also in everyday life in layman's term with Srinjoy and Soumik.