William Shakespeare had a run of the Calcutta winter, with two international seminars on the Bard happening back to back last month. The first was held at Rabindra Bharati University and the second at Jadavpur University.

The four-day event at Rabindra Bharati, organised in collaboration with the Shakespeare Society of Eastern India, had heightened local flavours. It kicked off with a “Shakespeare walk” from the Jorasanko campus to Nandan with a police band in attendance. It ended with garlanding of the Shakespeare bust at the Theatre Road crossing!

“We even had a collage of Shakespearean scenes in jatra form using Bengali translations of his plays,” said Amitava Roy, a professor of English.

At JU, a speaker from Beijing could not make it because of a state advisory against travel to India.

“Another from the US had to back out as his travel agent went bust,” said Paromita Chakravarti, one of the conference conveners at JU.

Shakespeare, however, did well. At Jadavpur, the conference theme was ‘Staged Encounters: History, Society, Identity and Shakespeare.’ It was organised by the English department with the Shakespeare Society of America.

“In the US, there are fewer opportunities for students to take part in seminars, which usually happen in hotels,” said Maureen McDonnell from Eastern Connecticut State University, US, watching students milling around John Drakakis, who has broken new ground in Shakespeare scholarship.

Film fundas

The split-level of Oxford Bookstore recently donned the look of a yesteryear film studio with posters of Devi, Pather Panchali, Bilet Pherot and other black and white and colour films.

The occasion was the launch of Alchemy Publishers’ The Director’s Mind written by Ujjal Chakraborty. Only Gautam Ghose from tinseltown brought some star appeal to the otherwise mundane do.

Ghose, in his characteristic drawl, underlined the importance of acquiring thorough theoretical knowledge before embarking on filmmaking. “It is important to understand that the structure of Ray’s films was like that of a music note and Kurosawa’s was more like epic dramas and both of them were great humanists.”