Ashoke Viswanathan (also Asoke, born in 1959) is a
Bengali Indian filmmaker and theatre personality, based in
Kolkata
Kolkata, also known as Calcutta ( its official name until 2001), is the capital and largest city of the Indian state of West Bengal. It lies on the eastern bank of the Hooghly River, west of the border with Bangladesh. It is the primary ...
, India.
Personal life
Viswanathan is the son of actor
N. Viswanathan.
He is a Mathematics graduate from
St. Xavier's College, Kolkata and a graduate in film direction from the
Film and Television Institute of India.
He is married to Madhumanti Maitra, a lecturer at a girls' college and an anchor. He has a daughter, Anusha, who is an actor.
Career
Viswanathan is currently a Professor and Head of Department of Producing For Film and TV specialisation and Dean (Film Wing) at
Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute and an occasional lecturer at
Jadavpur University.
He has made award-winning features and documentaries,
such as 2014's "The Lighthouse, The Ocean and The Sea", an exploration of the intellectual relationships between
Rabindranath Tagore
Rabindranath Thakur (; anglicised as Rabindranath Tagore ; 7 May 1861 – 7 August 1941) was a Bengalis, Bengali polymath who worked as a poet, writer, playwright, composer, philosopher, social reformer, and painter of the Bengal Renai ...
,
Romain Rolland
Romain Rolland (; 29 January 1866 – 30 December 1944) was a French dramatist, novelist, essayist, art historian and Mysticism, mystic who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1915 "as a tribute to the lofty idealism of his literary pro ...
and
Kalidas Nag. Two of Viswanathan's films have won national awards: his debut film "Shunya Theke Shuru" and "Kichu Sanglap Kichu Prolap"
He has also directed commercial films like "Sesh Sanghat", starring mainstream actors
Jaya Prada and
Jackie Shroff
Jaikishan Kakubhai Shroff (born 1 February 1957), known by his screen name Jackie Shroff, is an Indian actor and former model from Mumbai, Maharashtra, who primarily works in the Hindi film industry. In a career spanning over four decades, he ...
, and "Gumshuda" in Hindi, Malayalam and Tamil ("Vaira Kolaigal"), a
whodunit
A ''whodunit'' (less commonly spelled as ''whodunnit''; a colloquial elision of "Who asdone it?") is a complex plot-driven variety of detective fiction
Detective fiction is a subgenre of crime fiction and mystery fiction in which an criminal ...
based on
Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes () is a Detective fiction, fictional detective created by British author Arthur Conan Doyle. Referring to himself as a "Private investigator, consulting detective" in his stories, Holmes is known for his proficiency with obser ...
, targeted at a mass audience.
He has served as the Chairperson of the Jury for non-feature films for the
National Film Awards
The National Film Awards are awards for artistic and technical merit given for "Excellence within the Cinema of India, Indian film industry". Established in 1954, it has been administered, along with the International Film Festival of India ...
.
Three of his feature films and two of his short features have been included in the INDIAN PANORAMA sections of IFFI '94, 1999, 2001, 2002 and 2005. His films have been shown at the Commonwealth Film Festival, Manchester, the
Pyongyang International Film Festival, the
Dhaka International Film Festival, and the Ipswich Film Festival, among others.
Viswanathan has represented India at the Cambridge Seminar on contemporary British writing, held at Downing College, Cambridge (1997).
Filmography
Awards
*
Indira Gandhi Award for Best Debut Film of a Director, 1993, for ''
Shunya Theke Shuru''.
*
National Film Award – Special Jury Award, 1998, for ''
Kichhhu Sanlap Kichhu Pralap''.
References
External links
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Viswanathan, Ashoke
1959 births
Living people
Film directors from Kolkata
Bengali film directors
Director whose film won the Best Debut Feature Film National Film Award