HIS directorial debut in documentary film (on Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen) got him great international accolades. Now his directorial debut in feature film — Podokkhep (Footstep) has won him a National Award (Best Regional Feature Film-2007 and Best Actor-Soumitra Chatterjee).
And Dr Suman Ghosh (34-year of age), who teaches ‘Labour and Personnel Economics’ at Florida Atlantica University, enjoys this “pleasurable dilemma” of switching off and on between film and
economics.
Ghosh, who is on a personal-business mix tour to his home town Kolkata, has been receiving congratulatory mails from his students and colleagues in the US ever since the latter got to know about his National Award on the net. “It came as a pleasant surprise to them as most of them did not know that I am also into film making. The moment I land up in Florida, I send the film maker in me to long leave and when I’m here I hardly study economics,” Ghosh told Financial Chronicle.
Ghosh is now working almost simultaneously on two films-one in Bengali and another in Hindi and if things move right, atleast one of them will be released under the Anil Ambani-owned Big Films banner.
Striking a balance between economic studies and film making may not be as easy and smooth as Ghosh has made it look to be. While doing his post doctoral research on “Organisational Economics” at Cornell University, he used to quietly make his way into the Department of Theatre, Film and Dance at the same university. "I was always passionate about good films and film making. When I discovered that the film studies department was almost next to my department and the University authorities did not have any objection to me getting a formal training on film making, I could not leave that opportunity go,” said Ghosh.
After completing his course at Department of Theatre, Film and Dance, Cornell University, Ghosh worked as Assistant Director in Gautam Ghosh’s award winning film— “Dekha”, back home. Then came his maiden documentary feature— AmartyaSen: A Life Re-examined, which he made with his earning of $10,000. A student and professor of economics, Ghosh managed extensive interviews of two other Nobel Leureates—Kenneth J Arrow (known for his ‘Impossibioity Theorem’ in Social Choice Theory) and Paul Samuelson (known for his Comparative Statics method) and Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh, among others.
The New York-based leading distributor, First Run/ICarus Films took the distribution rights and it earned rave reviews at a number of international film festivals including in Vancouver, New York, Karlovy Vary, Seattle and New Delhi. “Filming Amartya Sen's life and works was an experience of a lifetime. His is a fascinating life. Very few would know about the battle fought with cancer at an early age how that shaped up his life and works,” said Ghosh.
“There are number of great men and women in India in our time but given a chance, I would like to do a documentary on Saurav Ganguly. Because I find his life, ups and downs in cricketing career and everything to be very cinematic and fascinating,” added Ghosh.

ritwikmukherjee
@mydigitalfc.com