Bedabrata Pain's acclaimed film Chittagong screened at RMIT University, Melbourne!
A special screening of the film Chittagong and a Q&A session with the director of the film Bedabrata Pain was organised by the Centre for Communication, Politics and Culture, RMIT University on 23rd October. The screening saw an interesting gathering of Australian academics and Indian community members. The event started with a discussion between filmmaker Bedabrata Pain and RMIT academic Dr Vikrant Kishore about the globalisation of Indian cinema and how Indian cinema can find its place in the global market. Bedbrata Pain provided some key insights regarding how films are being made today in India, and the problems that one is witnessing due to the corporatisation of the film production and distribution.
Here is a video snippet of the event:
About the film:
SYNOPSIS In a little known event of the 1930s British occupied South Asia, a handful of untrained teenage boys and girls, led by a school teacher, liberated a town from the colonial yoke for the first time in the 20th century. Set against this backdrop, Chittagong is the story of the youngest and the most unlikely participant - Jhunku Roy. CHITTAGONG tells the incredible story of how a studious, diffident and frail 14 old teenager Jhunku becomes a revolutionary, and battles nagging self-doubts and reluctance on one hand, and a formidable enemy on the other, to achieve an impossible triumph. Chittagong is an uplifting action-drama, made more compelling by the fact that it is true.
CHITTAGONG a film by Bedabrata Pain An uplifting action-drama of an improbable triumph by a reluctant teenager Winner of Golden Lotus in the Indian National Award, 2013 Winner of best music, best playback singer, and best actor (jury) award - national awards, 2013 Winner of Florence Film Festival 2012 Winner of Sedona International Film Festival 2013 Winner of Jaipur International Film Festival 2014 Winner of Washington DC Film Festival 2014
BEDABRATA PAIN – Scientist and Film-maker Dr. Bedabrata Pain was an award-winning scientist with NASA for 15 years. He quit NASA in 2009 to follow his passion – film-making. And with his debut film Chittagong (2012), he won the prestigious Golden Lotus in the National Award as the best first film and the Indira Gandhi Award as the best debut director. Chittagong also won three other National Awards. Nominated for awards in many international film festivals, It went on to win the best film awards in Florence, Sedona, Washington DC, and Jaipur film festivals. One of the inventors of CMOS digital imaging technology that enabled the digital camera revolution - from cell-phone cameras and DSLR to movie cameras (such as those used by RED and ARRI) and those in space telescopes, he led CMOS image sensor R&D at Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology for 15 years. He holds over 87 patents, and was inducted to the US Space Technology Hall of Fame. He shot Chittagong with the same technology that he and his team had invented and developed. A trained painter from his childhood days, and a singer (he is the leader singer of one of the songs of Chittagong), Bedabrata was the executive producer of internationally acclaimed and national best-film award winning Amu (2005) that premiered in Berlin and Toronto Film Festivals, the principal researcher for the documentary called Lifting the Veil (1997) on the impact of globalization in India, and the writer of the book titled Behind the events in Kashmir (1991).
Dr.Bedabrata Pain did his schooling in St. Lawrence High School, and South Point High School, Kolkata. He received his B. Tech. degree from IIT Kharagpur in 1986, topping his department in Electronics and Electrical Comm. Engineering. He got an Ivy League scholarship from Columbia University where he received his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in 1992 in Applied Physics. In 1993, he joined Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA as researcher, and by 2001, he was elevated to the post of a senior research scientist.
Concurrent with his NASA work, he taught in UCLA, published over 150 technical papers, chaired several Image Sensor conferences, served in the program committee of international conferences, was invited speaker to many conferences and companies. He won several awards, including the Lew-Allen Award, NASA Achievement Award for Inventors, IIT Distinguished Alumnus Award.
In addition to film-making, he continues to serve in the technical advisory board of several image sensor companies and guide them in developing the next-generation digital image sensing technology. He is currently working on his next feature film, tentatively titled No Loose Ends.