Can I get you anything?
Attention current or former Fulbrighters who have made a film about South Asia: we’ve launched a film festival just for you. Your Fulbright research/teaching award doesn’t have to have been in South Asia for you to submit your film. See full details on the FIIG Film Festival below. Deadline 1/15/25!
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.
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.
Wow. Thank you so much NYU Tisch School of the Arts Open Arts Program for sharing the doubly good news in their article about The Jeff & Shuvam Show, which I’m happy to say seems to be really taking off, and separately celebrating my article in UK peer-reviewed journal Race & Class. I’m grateful that they mentioned my youtube channel (not really a podcast) collaborators Shuvam Dasgupta and my fellow Fulbright alum, film director Abhijit Chowdhury, whose idea this was, and his India-based media production company Concept Cube which launched the podcast, not me solely.
My grant to attend the Fulbright Association conference last October, as mentioned in the article, was provided by our terrific adjunct faculty union ACT-UAW Local 7902.