CACrown ArchivesThe cinema collection
Menu
Research dossier · People & Ideas

Shoma A. Chatterji

Indian film scholar, author and freelance journalist

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 29, 2023
Entity authorityQ102254273 ↗
Source-derived summary

Shoma A. Chatterji is an Indian film scholar, author and freelance journalist. She has been the recipient of a number of awards including the National Film Award for Best Film Critic in 1991 and the National Awards for Best Writing on Cinema for her study of the works of Aparna Sen in the publication, Parama and Other Outsiders: The Cinema of Aparna Sen (2002). Notably, she is the only woman to have won both the national awards. She is the author of several biographies including those on Pramathesh Barua, Ritwik Ghatak and Suchitra Sen.

Between 2005–2006, Chatterji was a research fellow at the National Film Archive of India, following which between 2006–2007, she was a senior research fellow at the PSBT Delhi and then a senior research fellow at the Indian Council of Social Science Research between 2009–2011. Born and educated in Mumbai, Chatterji has two Master's degrees in economics and education and a PhD in Indian cinema history. Following her education, she was a lecturer in economics at a local college until 1991.

Awards

National Film Award for Best Film Critic in 1991 for film criticism in the Bengali language.

Bengal Film Journalists Association’s Best Critic Award in 1998.

National Awards for Best Writing on Cinema in 2003 for a study of the works of Aparna Sen.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Shoma A. Chatterji” as indian film scholar, author and freelance journalist. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Shoma, Chatterji and Indian.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1991, 2002, 2005, 2006—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Shoma, Chatterji and Indian providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Shoma A. Chatterji”, the useful work is to connect “indian film scholar, author and freelance journalist” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 29, 2023. The linked authority identifier is Q102254273. VIAF identifies the subject as 50655857. The Library of Congress control number is n85107282. None of the 2 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1991, 2002, 2005 and 2006.

Critical limits

A concise life account rarely captures disputed attribution, private networks or the changing language used to describe a career. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Shoma A. Chatterji”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Shoma A. Chatterji primary sources, Shoma A. Chatterji archive and Shoma research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Shoma A. Chatterji”?
  2. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
  3. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Shoma A. Chatterji” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.