2K, Wales, Merlin Residency
Kolkata 700 033, India
Tel: 91 33 55131407 [h]
Mob: 91 9830249430
E-mail:
sumit_chowdhury@yahoo.com
A documentary filmmaker and writer, Sumit’s involvement with ARENA began when he co-authored and co-edited the book, The Dispossessed: Victims of Development in Asia. He uses the creative vehicle of film documentation in awakening cultural activities and resisting the rise of fascism in the Indian political firmament.
Sumit actively engages in local, national and cross-border peace initiatives, including those aimed at promoting dialogues between peoples of India and Pakistan and in resisting US designs of empire building. He continues his filmmaking endeavours and till now has made a variety of films on subjects ranging from urban conservation and food security to literacy and alternative education, ecology and biodiversity, gender equality and reproductive rights.
His film, Where Light Turns on Shadows, emphasizing the central role of women in the family was screened at the World Population Conference in Cairo in 1995 while Love Story, stressing gender equality was made for the BBC in 1998 on a fellowship offered jointly by the Ford Foundation and MacArthur Foundation. His most recent work, Stirrings after the Cyclone, on the reconstruction and rebirth of life and society in Orissa following the most devastating cyclone of the century has been critically acclaimed.
Sumit is Coordinator and Founding Member of the Solidarity and Resistance Forum set up in Calcutta in the aftermath of September 11 and an Executive Committee Member of the Pakistan-India People’s Forum for Peace and Democracy.