Dakxinkumar Bajrange is an award winning filmmaker, playwright, director and activist from the Chhara De-notified Tribes of Ahmedabad in the western part of India. He is a recipient of Ford Foundation International Fellowship. Currently, working at the Budhan Theatre (a community theatre group of Chhara De-notified tribe of Gujarat) as a director.
As a filmmaker, he had directed over 50 television programs for television and independently directed 20 documentary films on various development and political issues. He is the winner of the documentary film award Jeevika-2005 for his film Fight for Survival which was focused on snake charmer livelihood issues. Currently he is working on the film, entitled Birth 1871 – India’s De-notified Tribes over Independence.
He has written and directed 10 plays and supervised 41 theatre productions of Budhan Theatre and performed more than 700 shows altogether in different part of India. He also conducted numerous workshops of street and participatory theatre in marginalized communities, schools, colleges and institutions, trained more than 300 actors and founded a number of theatre groups. He has co-ordinated and organized Gujarat’s biggest community theatre festival called Ahmedabad Theatre Festival (ATF), in the Ahmedabad City.
Mr. Bajrange is author of two books Budhan Bolta Hai (2010) in Hindi and the play Budhan, in Hindi and English. He is the author of many academic articles on theatre and films for development and has presented in many national and international conferences.
He has worked as an Associate Director with renowned documentary filmmaker Mr. Rakesh Sharma on his three films on the political issues of Gujarat Chet’ta Rejo, Khedu Mora Re and Kesariyo Kono. He is also a recipient of a Rajiv Gandhi Arts Fellowship and Bhasha Fellowship
Recently, he has been assigned responsibility as a State Co-ordinator to conduct survey studies on education among De-notified Tribes in the state of Gujarat. In Ahmedabad, he runs his film company Nomad Movies Ltd which provides film production and post-production facilities to make fiction and non-fiction films.
