4 stalwarts dropped from Kolkata film fest committee

Cultural stalwarts such as Mrinal Sen, Soumitra Chatterjee, Tarun Majumdar and Buddhadeb Dasgupta have been dropped from the permanent membership of the 2013 Kolkata International Film Festival Committee.

Cultural stalwarts such as Mrinal Sen, Soumitra Chatterjee, Tarun Majumdar and Buddhadeb Dasgupta have been dropped from the permanent membership of the 2013 Kolkata International Film Festival Committee.

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Instead, ministers Bratya Basu and Arup Biswas and a few others have been inducted.

Sen, Chatterjee, Majumdar and Dasgupta have been on the membership list since the inception of the Kolkata Film Festival in 1995. Efforts to reach them failed.

Their removal has shocked the film fraternity.

Director Aniket Chattopadhyay protested this. “It’s not possible to think of a film festival without them.”

Suman Mukhopadhyay, one of whose films became politically controversial, said, “There is a political angle to this row.”

Haranath Chakraborty, a member of the film festival committee, said: “I can’t comment on this. I haven’t seen the list.”