Can I get you anything?
Woohoo! Colossal congratulations to my friend, colleague and fellow Fulbrighter Abhijit Chowdhury, Concept Cube, Fourth Floor Entertainment and the entire cast and crew of The Strange Life of Dhrubo for rocking the Kolkata International Film Festival’s National Competition, Bengali Panorama category. Can’t say I’m surprised but I love hearing the news.
And it keeps on rolling. Congratulations, Abhijit Chowdhury and team, producers of The Jeff & Shuvam Show, for their latest feature film The Strange Life of Dhrubo making it into the prestigious Kolkata International Film Festival. I’ve seen it but I wish I could watch it on the big screen in the City of Joy.
I’m happy to share that I’ve accepted a new role as a Fulbright Scholar Liaison at Drexel University as part of the Drexel Global office, working closely with Dr. Rogelio Miñana, PhD, Vice Provost for Drexel Global and Professor of Spanish and Global Studies, and my fellow Fulbright Scholar Liaison Dan Kampsen, Senior Director of Global Safety and Operations.
As a Fulbright Scholar Liason I serve as a main point of contact for the Fulbright Scholar Program at Drexel University, facilitating increased participation in the Fulbright Scholar Program via institutional level support and peer to peer engagement, promoting Fulbright Scholar Programs, educating faculty & administrators about opportunities, encouraging candidates on campus, recognizing returned Fulbright grantees and supporting the development of Fulbright-friendly institutional policies.
There are over 1,600 designated Fulbright Scholar Liaisons on college and university campuses throughout the United States, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.
I had an absolutely wonderful time yesterday at Drexel University introducing Dr. Steven Butterman, Professor of Languages at the University of Miami and Fulbright Scholar Alumni Ambassador, for his Fulbright Talk.
His discussion of his experiences in Brazil as a Fulbrighter researching his topic LGBT+ Brazilians Out / Inside Brazil: Cultural Representations of Human Rights Discourses, Identity Reconstruction, and Political Asylum was eye-opening, heart-wrenching and even sometimes funny. He’s a masterful storyteller and gave our faculty a lot of sound advice on how to start their own Fulbright journeys.
This month, Shuvam and I review the Hindi-language film Sector 36, a police thriller about a serial child killer streaming now on Netflix. Loosely inspired by true events surrounding the Nithari case, it led us to a much deeper conversation than in our usual reviews including discussing the RG Kar rape case, the Atlanta child killings, the French gang rape case and the politics of caste and religion.
It has a lot of layers. It talks about caste politics, religion politics, and the patriarchal side of society. Deepak Dobpriyal is known to play comedy roles but this movie has given him an opportunity to really shine. Vikrant Massey has also done something which he has never done before. So, kudos to both of these great actors . . . The film keeps the police thriller genre fresh by placing a real life social issue in the middle of it, which is that the police and the media are not interested if it’s a poor kid.
– The Jeff & Shuvam Show
Dive into our review below:
The Jeff & Shuvam Show is shot in Philadelphia and produced by award-winning film director and my fellow former Fulbrighter Abhijit Chowdhury and his Kolkata-based media production company Concept Cube.