Bijaya Jena

Bijaya Jena was born in Cuttack, Odisha,the eastern state of India to landed gentry.Her father was an Engineer.After school,she studied Acting in Pune Film School .After completing her course,she traveled as a student to erstwhile USSR.She met the legendary film maker Kamal Amrohi who created a fictitious role for her in his historical magnum opus Razia Sultan which was already on the floor.She acted in some Odia films after Razia Sultan flopped at the box office and wanted to produce a low budget film with her in the lead role so that she can escape the casting couch in Bollywood.She signed one of the best script writers of India, Bimal Dutt and applied for a state fund.As a young producer with very little fund,she assisted Bimal Dutt on the script and translated his dialogues into Odia which helped her immensely in understanding the script writing process.He also exposed her to his private library which had all the works of Tagore, Tolstoy, Camus, Sartre, Kafka, Brecht, Zola, Chekov, Hugo, Dostoyevsky, Turgenev, Flaubert et al. By the time the fund was in place, Bimal Dutt was ailing and he suggested that Bijaya direct the film as she had understood his script very well.So, Bijaya became a director and made her first film TARA in Odia in 1992 which went on to receive a National award.She was nominated for the Best Actress in India and also in The Women's Film Festival in France where she was competing with Agnieszka Holland,Sally Potter,Marian Hansel,Kristin Johanisdottir and Penny Marshall.Her second directorial venture was Abhaas(Prologue) in 1997 where she had the honor of having Hungarian maestro Istval Gaal as her script advisor. She took a break to raise her daughter and write few scripts.She took another break to look after her ailing mother who passed away in 2007.She is now doing an Indo-French co-production adapted from an Indian classic and also developing a film in English set at the backdrop of Goa liberation from Portuguese rule.