Nandita Das to relinquish office of CFSI chairperson next month

Nandita Das will quit as the chairperson of the Children’s Films Society of India (CFSI) next month. The actress-filmmaker has turned down the offer to continue her tenure, as she wants to spend more time with her son Vihaan, who will turn two this month. “For now, Vihaan is my priority. The time I can get to spend with him now will never return. Ever since my pregnancy and his birth, I have been juggling things: my work at CFSI, to a monthly column for a magazine and conducting talks and conferences abroad. I have even shot two films in Hindi and Tamil,” she relates. The actress wants to focus on her debut as a director and actor in a play tentatively titled Black & White. The play is about a husband and wife discovering that their supposedly enlightened mature marriage is as much founded on biases and inequality as the marriages in the less educated classes where we normally identify discrimination in the treatment between husband and wife. Nandita and her entrepreneur-husband Subodh Maskara will play husband and wife from the educated ‘enlightened’ section of the middle-class questioning their marriage. Talking about her tenure at the CFSI, Das observes, “It has been extremely rewarding while it lasted. We’ve released Gattu, the first ever film from CFSI to get an organised all-India release. Our next film from the CFSI is Goopi Gawaiiya Bagha Bajaiiya, a Hindi animation film based on Satyajit Ray’s Bengali classic by a similar name (Goopi Gayen Bagha Bayen). The film will take animation films in our country to another level,” she concludes. Nandita’s play is all set for a 22 September opening in Delhi followed by performances in Mumbai on 6 and 7 October (2012).