Ananya Banerjee

Ananya Banerjee hails from the verdant hills of Darjeeling. She belongs to a family that has been tea planters for four generations and claims to have quality tea in her veins. She is an alumnus of the University of Cambridge, the University of Calcutta, the University of Texas at Austin, and the Film and Television Institute of India at Pune, India.She has been a media professional for more than three decades and has been associated with Doordarshan, India's national broadcaster, as producer, director, controller of programmes and channel manager (Kashmir). She has directed biopics on astronaut Kalpana Chawla and physicist C.V. Raman, and the centenary film on industrialist J.R.D. Tata. Her documentary Voyage to Freedom on eight differentlyabled people, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Charter of Human Rights, won three international awards. She has been a jury member of Prix Jeunesse, Munich; Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union Symposium, Kuala Lumpur; and the UK-based Whitley Awards, also called the 'Green Oscars', given to conservationists from around the world. She has been a panelist in several international forums on debates concerning the visual media. She is currently working on a biopic on film legend Mrinal Sen and is a Media Consultant, heading the social media team at Doordarshan.A voracious reader, Ananya loves delving into scriptures and legends, the poetry and music of Rabindranath Tagore and Kazi Nazrul Islam, and the robust optimism of Robert Browning's verse. Her favourite reads include the writings of Bibhuti Bhushan Banerjee, Shirshendu Mukherjee, Banaphul, Munshi Prem Chand, P.D. James, Paulo Coelho, Richard Bach, Antoine De Saint-Exupery and Roald Dahl.She is a Commonwealth Bursary Fellow. Satyajit Ray and Mrinal Sen were her referees for a Fulbright Scholarship.