Koel Chatterjee's Report

The Una Ellis-Fermor Award, 2016

My research, supervised by Dr Deana Rankin, is on the influence of Shakespeare in Bollywood, a field of study that is still in its nascent stage. A lot of my research, therefore, involves visiting archives in India and looking through uncatalogued archival material at the National Film Archive of India in Pune, the Cinema Resource Centre in Chennai or the Shakespeare Archive at Jadavpur University, Kolkata, as well as interviewing film makers, script writers and Shakespeare theatre actors based in India. As I am writing up my PhD this year, I had to visit the archives again to look at film scripts and photo stills that I was not allowed to photocopy on a visit I had made in my first year of study.

To mark the 400th death anniversary of Shakespeare this year, I also organised an international conference on Shakespeare and Indian Cinema at London with three female early career researchers associated with The Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham, Queen Mary, University of London and University of York and in collaboration with the British Film Institute and Asia House in April 2016. My role in organising the conference was to secure the attendance of the Keynote Panel and liaise with the speakers who flew in from India to contribute to the conference and film festival. The event central to the conference was the screening of Vishal Bhardwaj's Shakespeare trilogy Maqbool, 2004 (Macbeth), Omkara, 2006 (Othello) and Haider, 2014 (Hamlet), three films that are central to my own research. The films were screened at BFI Southbank as part of the Shakespeare on Film project spearheaded by Sir Ian Mckellan and Mr Bhardwaj had agreed to attend the conference at Asia House and lead a keynote panel along with the scriptwriters of his three Shakespeare films as well as attend three question and answer sessions after the screenings of each of his films at the BFI. I had also wanted to arrange an exhibition of unseen ephemera related to Indian Shakespeares on Screen for the conference based on all the research I had already done for my PhD. Therefore, it was important for me to physically travel to India to meet with the Director at NFAI and Mr. Bhardwaj.

As I am a self-funded international student, the Una Ellis-Fermor Award made it possible for me to travel to India for my research early this year (18th December - 15th January) as well as liaise with all the contributors who made the conference such a resounding success. The BFI screenings were sold out weeks before the event and the conference was attended by Shakespeare scholars, film makers and practitioners from all over the world. The previously unseen archival material that was made available at the conference also opened a lot of doors for early career researchers and established academics in Shakespeare studies to discuss other collaborative projects.

I spoke at the conference myself and introduced the three films at the BFI to packed audiences from diverse backgrounds. The success of the screenings compelled the BFI to digitise Maqbool to be made available for screening across the UK. I was invited back by the BFI to deliver a talk on Indian Shakespeare films in May for a Shakespeare Study Day and I used some of my research from the trip to submit a chapter towards an upcoming book on Indian Shakespeare films to be published by Routledge by the end of the year. I was also invited by Al Jazeera English to Speak on Indian Shakespeares on the Bard's birthday on 23rd April which was quite exciting! This trip therefore was very fruitful for my research and I am very grateful to the Una Ellis-Fermor Award for making it possible.