ABOUT US |
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The London Bengali Film Festival (LBFF) is an annual celebration of films from or about the Bengali Diaspora. The festival will be held in London with special guest and talks, followed by a red carpet film awards ceremony, thus making it the largest Bengali film festival in the world, outside of Bengal. Our goal is to bring the rich artistic and modern culture of Bengal and experiences & contacts of the Bengali diaspora portrayed through film to the mainstream platform. |
"Mainstream films have a global audience, but global stories also need to be seen by the
mainstream audience. The London Bengali Film Festival does exactly that." Munsur Ali - Founder and CEO, LBFF
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Founder & CEO |
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Festival Director |
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Munsur Ali Film Producer and the Deputy Chair for Culture, Heritage and Libraries at the historic City of London Corporation, Munsur also co-founded the DAC (Digital Arts Collective) based in the largest film studios in London. Munsur realised the need for a platform to identify Bengali experiences on the big screen as he founded a parallel programme Limelight Film Awards,which at it's peak was identified as the largest independent short film awards in the UK. |
Subidita Bhattacharya - Moringa Entertainment With an MA in Film Distribution and Marketing, Subidita has been associated with film production, marketing, release and organising special screenings. She stepped into the entertainment industry as an intern in the London-based international sales company WestEnd Films at the Cannes Film Festival 2014. Later she worked as a production manager in a docu-reality TV show which was acquired by Netflix. At Moringa Entertainment’s distribution wing she plays a key role in the business development; identifying and acquiring the films to distribute. |
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Programme Director |
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Dilruba Yasmeen Ruhee Ruhee is a super model turned actress and one of the biggest stars in Bangladesh's silver screen and an award winning personality since 2006, who is currently living in London and the founder of Ruhuu 25, an events company. She is also producing her own creative content ranging from cinema to TV and various cultural events. |
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juRY MEMBERS |
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Dr Ashvin Immanuel Devasundaram - Senior Lecturer - World Cinem (London) Dr Devasundaram is Senior Lecturer in World Cinema at Queen Mary University of London. He is author of India's New Independent Cinema: Rise of the Hybrid (Routledge, 2016), Indian Cinema Beyond Bollywood: The New Independent Cinema Revolution (Routledge, 2018) and Indian Indies: A Guide to New Independent Indian Cinema (with a foreword by Shabana Azmi), Routledge, 2022- the world's first books on new Indian Indie films. |
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Dr Rohit K Dasgupta (he/him/they), Senior Lecturer in Cultural Industries School of Culture & Creative Arts, University of Glasgow Dr Rohit K Dasgupta,is a senior lecturer at the University of Glasgow. His research interests include South Asian popular culture & cultural politics; queer activisms & identities and migration & diaspora. He has published numerous books including Digital Queer Cultures in India (Routledge); Styling South Asian Youth Cultures (Bloomsbury), Friendship as Social Justice Activism(Seagull/Chicago) & the forthcoming Desi Queers (Hurst) and India’s Imperial formations (FDU). He is also a councillor & deputy cabinet member for social justice & culture in the London Borough of Newham & Visiting Senior Fellow in the London School of Economics. |
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Dr Debanjan Chakrabarti - Director British Council (India) Dr Debanjan Chakrabarti is Director British Council, East and Northeast India. He has over 20 years of experience in leading education, development, arts and cultural collaboration programmes in India and internationally for the British Council. |
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Charity Mwathi - Assistant Programmes Officer (Stakeholder Engagement) Social Policy Development - The Commonwealth Secretariat Charity Mwathi is a Communications & Marketing Specialist from Kenya with a background in International Relations. She is the Assistant Programme Officer, responsible for Stakeholder Engagement in the Secretariat’s Social Policy Development division which entails, youth, sports, health, and education. |
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Sarthak Roy - Assistant Research Officer, Governance and Peace Directorate - The Commonwealth Secretariat Sarthak Roy - Assistant Research Officer, Governance and Peace Directorate - The Commonwealth Secretariat Sarthak Roy is an Assistant Research Officer, Governance and Peace Directorate at the Commonwealth. He holds an LLM degree in International Law from the Graduate Institute Geneva (IHEID). He works across the intersection of law, justice, geopolitics, human rights and various other policy issues. Hailing from the Indian city of Kolkata, Sarthak enjoys football, poetry, musicals, theatre and music during his free time. In the past, Sarthak has been a member of several theatre productions based on the works of Shakespeare, Tagore, Godard and others. He has a particular penchant for country music and Afro beats. |
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Alithia Barampataz - Human Rights Officer, Governance and Peace Directorate - The Commonwealth Secretariat Alithia is a human rights officer at the Commonwealth Secretariat. In this role, she provides technical assistance to Commonwealth countries to strengthen respect for and protection of human rights. She previously worked with the United Nations system for over a decade in South Sudan and in her home country, Papua New Guinea (PNG). In PNG, she led the organisation of the annual PNG Human Rights Film Festival from 2010 to 2020, which strengthened public discourse on critical human rights issues affecting PNG. She played a key role in expanding the reach of the festival to youth and secondary school and university students, and promoting films made in, and by filmmakers from, PNG and the Pacific region. She’s passionate about the unique power of film to transcend time and space and highlight the universality of our shared humanity and inherent dignity and inspire change. |
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ADVISORY BOARD |
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Charlotte Worthington - Artist / Former Head of of Film (London / Singapore) Charlotte is an artists and the former Head of Film Department at the London Metropolitan University, then moved to Singapore where she was the Programme Leader at LASALLE College of the Arts in Singapore. She has been with the festival since it started. |
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Dr. Shoma A. Chatterji - Film Critic (Kolkata) Dr. Shoma A. Chatterji is a freelance journalist and film critic of 47 years standing. She has authored 30 titles including on film studies. She won the National Award for Best Film Critic in 1991 and for Best Book on Cinema in 2003. She has been bestowed several Lifetime Achievement Awards for her contribution to journalism (cinema and gender respectively). She lives in Kolkata with her husband. |
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E. Nina Rothe - Journalist (London) E. Nina Rothe is a journalist who was born in Florence, Italy, grew up in New York City and now calls London her home. She has written for Vogue Italia, Harper’s Bazaar Arabia, The Art Newspaper, Empire Arabia, the HuffPost and The National, among others. She is the co-founder of MIME.news (Moving Image Middle East), a platform for highlighting everything visual in and from the Region. |
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Martin Gooch - FIlm Maker (London) Martin Gooch is a London based celebrated film maker who has worked on over 200 productions, including 'Judge Dredd,' 'Harry Potter' to his own features 'Death' and 'The Search for Simon.' He also lectures on film productions and regularly travels on his film journeys. |
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Billy Mackinnon - Producer / Writer / Director (Berlin / UK) Billy is a director / producer / script writer and credits include 'Small faces,' Hideous Kinky, - Starring Kate Winslet, Award winning film 'Piano,' to name a few. |
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David W Miller ACIS ACIB DMS - Chair, British Federation of Film Societies (UK) Trustee and Programmer Keswick Film Club |
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