Manoj Barpujari

Manoj Barpujari is an Indian film critic, poet, and journalist who has received the National Film Award for Best Film Critic at the 59th National Film Awards The National Film Awards gets presented every year >> Read More... . Born and brought up in Guwahati in Assam, Manoj Barpujari started his journey as a film critic during the early period of the 1980s. Manoj Barpujari’s writings predominantly centered on the prevalent social and political issues. But fascinated by the world of entertainment, he began writing about movies. Then, he joined the Assamese daily newspaper, Dainik Agradoot, as a full-time journalist and worked there for about three decades before deciding to quit his position as an Associate editor in 2015 to concentrate fully on cinema and related researches.

Other than Dainik Agraboot, Manoj Barpujari has also worked occasionally for dailies like The Assam Tribune, Frontline, Eastern Chronicle, and more. In 2010, he won the Hafeez Karamath Journalism Fellowship of Trinidad & Tobago. Manoj Barpujari’s broad knowledge in the area of cinema is unbelievable. He has worked as a member of the jury panel for several prestigious Award functions and film festivals. Some of them are the National Film Awards 2015, Assam State Film Awards 2013 and 2018, Prag Cine Awards, Adda Short Film Festival, and international film festivals of Busan, Dhaka, Bengaluru, Port of Spain, Almaty, Kolkata, Hyderabad, and more. Manoj Barpujari holds the position of a member in the film associations like FCCI, FIPRESCI, and IFCA in India.

Also, he serves as a member of the international board of the SHOFF film Festival of South Korea and Busan International Animal Rights Film Festival. In 2000, Manoj Barpujari assisted Director Gautam Bora in his documentary Poet of the Crossroads. He has directed and edited the Door darshan show Sampratik which got telecasted in 2004. As a writer, Manoj Barpujari has about twelve books to his credits, among which three are about films.

He has contributed to a chapter in The Routledge Handbook of Indian Cinemas in which he wrote about the Assamese cinema. Manoj Barpujari is also an acclaimed poet who has written poems since 1980, and many have translated several of his poems into many Indian languages. For his book Amlakhi Gasar Suhari, they awarded him the Munin Borkotary Literary Award in 2003. In 2011, Manoj Barpujari got the National Award for Best Film Critic at the 59th National Film Awards for his extensive writings on the Assamese and North-East Indian cinema. By winning the award, he became the fourth individual from Assam to win the National Award for Best Film Critic.