Budhan Podcast: Telling our COVID stories

Dakxinkumar Bajrange is an award-winning filmmaker, playwright, director and activist from the Chhara De-notified Tribe of Ahmedabad, in western India. He received the Ford Foundation International Fellowship (2010-11) to study Theatre and Global Development at the University of Leeds, UK. His book ‘Budhan Bolta Hai’ (Budhan Speaks) was awarded the first prize for "Mahatma Gandhi Best Creative Writing on Human rights" by National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) in 2010-11. He is a recipient of the Rajiv Gandhi Arts Fellowship (2004-05) and Bhasha Fellowship (2002-03) to study art forms of nomadic and de-notified communities in Gujarat. Currently, he works as the Artistic Director at Budhan Theatre, a community theatre group of the Chhara de-notified tribe of Gujarat. He is also the founding director of Nomad Movies Pvt. Ltd, which provides production and post-production facilities to make fiction and non-fiction films.
As a filmmaker, he has directed 70 fiction and non-fiction films on various development and political issues in India. His films are widely screened in film festivals and universities in India and abroad. He is the winner of the South Asia documentary film award Jeevika (2005) for his film ‘Fight for Survival’. His film on De-notified Tribes of India entitled ‘Birth 1871’, was screened at 11 universities in the USA and Canada and in 5 universities across the UK. From 2008 to 2010, he worked as an associate director with renowned documentary filmmaker Rakesh Sharma on three films around the political issues of Gujarat - Chet’ta Rejo, Khedu Mora Re, Kesariyo Kono.
He has written and directed 11 plays and supervised 46 theatre productions of Budhan Theatre and performed in more than 700 shows in different parts of India. He has conducted a number of theatre workshops for community development in marginalised communities, schools, colleges and institutions, trained more than 300 actors and founded a number of theatre groups. He coordinated and organised Gujarat’s biggest community theatre festival called Ahmedabad Theatre Festival (ATF) in 2012.
Mr. Bajrange is the author of two books, ‘Budhan Bolta Hai’ (2010) published in Hindi and the play ‘Budhan’, published in Hindi and English by Bhasha Research and Publication Centre. ‘Budhan Bolta Hai’ (Budhan Speaks) was also published in Marathi by Ranade Publication, Pune. His academic publications have appeared in Antipode: A Journal of Radical Geography, Liffey Press Ireland, Seminar India, Bhasha Research and Publication Centre, Penguin India, Malayalam Manorama, Budhan Newsletter and Padmagandha Publication. He has presented papers in many reputed national and international conferences in India, USA, UK, Canada and has given talks on theatre and films in the United Nations in 2007.