Ashoke Viswanathan

Ashoke Viswanathan (also Asoke, born in 1959) is a Bengali Indian filmmaker and theatre personality, based in Kolkata, India.

Personal life Viswanathan is the son of actor N. Viswanathan. He is a Mathematics graduate from St. Xavier's College, Kolkata and a graduate in film direction from the Film and Television Institute of India. He has a daughter, Anusha, who is an actor.

Career Viswanathan is currently a Professor and Head of Department of Producing For Film and TV specialisation and Dean (Film Wing) at Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute and an occasional lecturer at Jadavpur University. Two of Viswanathan's films have won national awards: his debut film "Shunya Theke Shuru" and "Kichu Sanglap Kichu Prolap"

He has also directed commercial films like "Sesh Sanghat", starring mainstream actors Jaya Prada and Jackie Shroff, and "Gumshuda" in Hindi, Malayalam and Tamil ("Vaira Kolaigal"), a whodunit based on Sherlock Holmes, targeted at a mass audience.

Three of his feature films and two of his short features have been included in the INDIAN PANORAMA sections of IFFI '94, 1999, 2001, 2002 and 2005. His films have been shown at the Commonwealth Film Festival, Manchester, the Pyongyang International Film Festival, the Dhaka International Film Festival, and the Ipswich Film Festival, among others.

Viswanathan has represented India at the Cambridge Seminar on contemporary British writing, held at Downing College, Cambridge (1997).

Filmography

Awards

Year Award Category Film ref.1993 National Film Awards National Film Award for Best Debut Film of a Director Shunya Theke Shuru 1998 National Film Awards National Film Award – Special Jury AwardKichhhu Sanlap Kichhu Pralap