Madhusree Dutta – Woman filmmaker, activist and art curator

Madhusree Dutta is a national award winning filmmaker, theatre artist, author and curator. She is also a woman activist since early 1990s, and is associated with many woman organizations. 2-time National award winner, she is mostly associated with independent and art films, apart from her art exhibitions. She graduated from National School of Drama, New Delhi in dramatics in the 1980s, got shifted to the dream city of Mumbai in 1987, and created a niche of her own through her work. Many of her documentaries and independent films have been shown at film festivals, winning accolades.

Madhusree Dutta was born in Jamshedpur, Jharkhand. After graduating from NSD, she started her career as a filmmaker and curator in the late 1980s. “Expression” – her first art exhibition in the early 1990s was one of the early feminist curating works in the country. She included activism in her curative works, apart from different experiments combining different forms of art works. She also collaborated with artists like filmmaker Philip Scheffner, visual artists – Nilima Sheikh and Archana Hande, playwright Malini Bhattacharya etc. She is a founding member of organizations dedicated to activism such as Academy of Arts of the World), Majlis etc.

As a theatre artist, her career began with Bengali theatre group Anarjya in Kolkata. After directing a few Bengali plays in the first half of 1990s, she made her first documentary film – I Live in Behrampada in 1993 based on communal riots of Mumbai of 1992-1993, and it bagged Filmfare Award for best documentary in 1994. Since then she made documentaries, features, short films etc in different languages. Apart from her curative works, she published a few papers also. She has also served as a jury member for different film festivals.

Madhusree Dutta – Some interesting and less-known facts

1. She received national film awards in 1996 and 2001.

2. Well-known actor Harish Khanna marked his big screen debut through Dutta’s directorial venture, Memories of Fear in 1995.

3. She was honoured with Lifetime Achievement Award for documentaries at 12th International Documentary and Short Film Festival of Kerala.

4. She is a graduate in economics.

5. She served as chairperson of the jury in International Documentary and Short Film Festival of Kerala in 2009, and a few more.

6. In 2006 her documentary film – Seven Islands and A Metro, became the first documentary film to get a commercial theatre release. It was released in Mumbai.