Happy Birthday Bobita

Today is the 64th birthday of renowned film actress Farida Akhter Bobita.

She is best known for her performance in Satyajit Ray’s Distant Thunder, a novel adaptation about the Bengal famine of 1943, which won the Golden Bear prize at the 23rd Berlin International Film Festival in 1973.

She was active in the 1970s through 1990s as an actress in Bangladeshi films. Bobita was born to an educated family that had its origins in the west-Bangladeshi district of Jessore.

She has two sisters and three brothers. Bobita’s mother studied in Lady Brabourne College in Calcutta.

In an interview with the Independent newspaper in 2004, Bobita says that it was Afzal Chowdhury who suggested the screen name Bobita for her.

In another interview with the Daily Star in 2005, she mentions that Zahir Raihan originally casts her for the movie Shongshaar. A different version of the story is that she adopted the name after appearing in Ehtesham’s movie Pitch Dhala Path.

Bobita’s brother-in-law Zahir Raihan first cast her for his movie Jaltey Suraj Ka Nichey. The film was not completed in the end but she found a break-through into the Dhaka film industry. Her first released feature was Shesh Porjonto.