Raja Choudhury (born Ranjit Choudhury, 11 June 1964) is a
National Film Award
The National Film Awards is the most prominent film award ceremony in India. Established in 1954, it has been administered, along with the International Film Festival of India and the Indian Panorama, by the Indian government's Directora ...
(
India
India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...
) winning documentary film maker, architect, public speaker, spiritual teacher on The Shift Network, and designer of multimedia installations and events and Web sites, some of which have received
Webby Award
The Webby Awards are awards for excellence on the Internet presented annually by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, a judging body composed of over two thousand industry experts and technology innovators. Categories include ...
s. He produces international documentary films on Indian wisdom, history and consciousness. Films he has made include Spirituality in the Modern World, I Believe:Universal Values for a Global Society, The Modern Mystic, The Quantum Indians, Yoga: Aligning to the Source and most recently India's official global film celebrating the International Day of Yoga entitled Yoga Harmony with Nature which was released on 21 June 2015. He is currently producing a new film with WTTW Chicago PBS called America's First Guru on Swami Vivekananda and the arrival of Yoga and Hinduism into the popular American conversation in 1893. Raja is on the faculty of The Shift Network online teaching subjects on Indian Wisdom. Raja is also a teacher at A Thousand Suns Academy teaching advanced programs and workshops in Indian wisdom and meditation.
Early life
Raja Choudhury was born in
Ibadan, Nigeria
Ibadan (, ; ) is the Capital city, capital and most populous city of Oyo State, in Nigeria. It is the List of Nigerian cities by population, third-largest city by population in Nigeria after Lagos and Kano (city), Kano, with a total population ...
to Indian parents Sukumar and Manjusri Choudhury on 11 June 1964. His father was a UN expert on deputation to the WHO from India. He grew up in
Nigeria
Nigeria ( ), , ig, Naìjíríyà, yo, Nàìjíríà, pcm, Naijá , ff, Naajeeriya, kcg, Naijeriya officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a country in West Africa. It is situated between the Sahel to the north and the Gulf o ...
and then Freetown,
Sierra Leone
Sierra Leone,)]. officially the Republic of Sierra Leone, is a country on the southwest coast of West Africa. It is bordered by Liberia to the southeast and Guinea surrounds the northern half of the nation. Covering a total area of , Sierra ...
where he attended the Sierra Leone Grammar School. At 16 he moved to
Canada
Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...
and studied at the
University of Waterloo
The University of Waterloo (UWaterloo, UW, or Waterloo) is a public research university with a main campus in Waterloo, Ontario
Waterloo is a city in the Canadian province of Ontario. It is one of three cities in the Regional Municipality ...
. He went on to study Architecture at the
AA School of Architecture in 1984 in London, UK where he graduated in 1992. At the AA he started the Computer Graphics Unit before graduating bringing CAD and 3D modelling to the school for the first time. At the AA he studied with architects
Ron Herron
Ronald James Herron () was an English architect and teacher. He is perhaps best known for his work with the seminal experimental architecture collective Archigram, which was formed in London in the early 1960s. Herron was the creator of one of ...
and
Ranulph Glanville
Ranulph Glanville (13 June 1946 – 20 December 2014) was an Anglo-Irish cybernetician and design theorist. He was a founding vice-president of the International Academy for Systems and Cybernetic Sciences (2006–2009) and president of the Amer ...
and
cybernetics
Cybernetics is a wide-ranging field concerned with circular causality, such as feedback, in regulatory and purposive systems. Cybernetics is named after an example of circular causal feedback, that of steering a ship, where the helmsperson m ...
expert
Gordon Pask
Andrew Gordon Speedie Pask (28 June 1928 – 29 March 1996) was an English author, inventor, educational theorist, cybernetician and psychologist who made contributions to cybernetics, instructional psychology, experimental epistemology and ed ...
.
Early Career in Digital Media
In 1993 Choudhury, Mudimo Okondo, and Emma Westecott founded Zone UK, a digital design company in
London
London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...
. Choudhury designed the VID Zone Kiosk Network at Tower Records and HMV stores in London. The kiosk was described as "The Best Public Demo of Multimedia Ever" by Design Technology Magazine. In 1995 the team at Zone launched the UK's first CDROM Music & Lifestyle Magazine UnZip with
IPC Magazines
TI Media (formerly International Publishing Company, IPC Magazines Ltd, IPC Media and Time Inc. UK) was a consumer magazine and digital publisher in the United Kingdom, with a portfolio selling over 350 million copies each year. Most of its tit ...
which was awarded a Milia D’Or at
Mipcom
MIPCOM (Marché International des Programmes de Communication, English: International Market of Communications Programmes) is an annual trade show held in the French town of Cannes, traditionally in the month of October and running for 4 days. It ...
in
Cannes
Cannes ( , , ; oc, Canas) is a city located on the French Riviera. It is a communes of France, commune located in the Alpes-Maritimes departments of France, department, and host city of the annual Cannes Film Festival, Midem, and Cannes Lions I ...
in 1996. Zone was the first company in the UK to introduce kiosk and the Internet into music stores, night clubs and university bars. In 1997 Zone installed multimedia kiosks in 10 London universities, providing the MeTV Network for students. Choudhury moved to
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
in 1998 and designed the FastTake Video Kiosk Network, the online launches of
Softbank
is a Japanese multinational conglomerate holding company headquartered in Minato, Tokyo which focuses on investment management. The Group primarily invests in companies operating in technology, energy, and financial sectors. It also runs the ...
, NetValue and
BT Conferencing, and became creative director for agencies
Cohn & Wolfe
Burson Cohn & Wolfe is a multinational public relations and communications firm, headquartered in New York City. In February 2018, parent WPP Group PLC announced that it had merged its subsidiaries Cohn & Wolfe with Burson-Marsteller. The comb ...
and Converseon. In 2007 he designed Websites
Webby Honorees in 2008: OurWeddingDay.com and CBCWorldwide.com. In 2008 he produced India's first multimedia broadband kiosk entertainment network for
Coca-Cola
Coca-Cola, or Coke, is a carbonated soft drink manufactured by the Coca-Cola Company. Originally marketed as a temperance drink and intended as a patent medicine, it was invented in the late 19th century by John Stith Pemberton in Atlanta ...
called the Dilli Dil Se Network in time for the 2009
Indian Premier League
The Indian Premier League (IPL), also known as TATA IPL for sponsorship reasons, is a men's T20 franchise cricket league of India. It is annually contested by ten teams based out of seven Indian cities and three Indian states. The leagu ...
offering videos, video chat, facts, results, games, social networking and mobile downloads. The touch-screen kiosks were available at 30 locations across New Delhi. Since 2009, Raja has continued to work in the digital space advising large brands and non-profit organizations including tGELF, Alchemist Group and The Shift Network.
Documentary films
Choudhury's first documentary film as a co-producer and art director was "Desi: South Asians of New York" for
PBS
The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcasting, public broadcaster and Non-commercial activity, non-commercial, Terrestrial television, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly fu ...
Channel Thirteen in 2000 with Glazer Creative in New York. He then started publishing a newsletter entitled Universal Quest with
A.T. Mann. He went on to produce numerous videos for the
American India Foundation
The American India Foundation (AIF, founded 2001) is a nonprofit American organization working in India. It is one of the largest secular, non-partisan American organizations supporting development work in India. AIF is committed to improving the ...
, the
Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center
The Ramakrishna Vivekananda Center of New York is a branch of the Ramakrishna Order of India, founded in 1933 by Swami Nikhilananda. After Nikhilananda's death in 1973, the center was headed by Swami Adiswarananda until the latter's death in 200 ...
and others. In 2006 he produced his first documentary film "Spirituality in the Modern World" which captured a dialogue between
Ken Wilber
Kenneth Earl Wilber II (born January 31, 1949) is an American philosopher and writer on transpersonal psychology and his own integral theory, a philosophy which suggests the synthesis of all human knowledge and experience.
Life and career
Wilbe ...
and
Traleg Kyabgon Rinpoche. The DVD was released in 2007.
![Raja Choudhury Film Montage](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/04/Raja_Choudhury_Film_Montage.jpg)
In 2010 Raja produced his second documentary film "I Believe: Universal Values for a Global Society" on the beliefs of
Karan Singh
Karan Singh (born 9 March 1931) is an Indian politician and philosopher. He is the son of the last ruling Maharaja of the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir, Sir Hari Singh. He was the prince regent of Jammu and Kashmir until 1952. From 19 ...
. The film was launched by India's Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh
Manmohan Singh (; born 26 September 1932) is an Indian politician, economist and statesman who served as the 13th prime minister of India from 2004 to 2014. He is also the third longest-serving prime minister after Jawaharlal Nehru and Indir ...
in March 2011, and was shown on India's national public TV network
Doordarshan
Doordarshan (abbreviated as DD; Hindi: , ) is an Indian public service broadcaster founded by the Government of India, owned by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting and one of Prasar Bharati's two divisions. One of India's largest bro ...
. In 2011 he produced the film "The Modern Mystic" on the spiritual teacher Sri M of Madanapalle. The DVD was launched in Bangalore India in October 2011. Both films were selected for the Spirit Enlightened Film Festival at CultureUnplugged.com. In 2012 he produced "The 21st Century Indian" profiling
S. M. Krishna
Somanahalli Mallaiah Krishna (born 1 May 1932) is an Indian politician who served as Minister of External Affairs of India from 2009 to October 2012. He was the 16th Chief Minister of Karnataka from 1999 to 2004 and the 19th Governor of Mahara ...
, India's Minister of External Affairs. In August 2013 Choudhury launched the film The Quantum Indians
about the great Indian scientists
Satyendranath Bose
Satyendra Nath Bose (; 1 January 1894 – 4 February 1974) was a Bengali mathematician and physicist specializing in theoretical physics. He is best known for his work on quantum mechanics in the early 1920s, in developing the foundation for ...
,
CV Raman
Sir Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman (; 7 November 188821 November 1970) was an Indian physicist known for his work in the field of light scattering.
Using a spectrograph that he developed, he and his student K. S. Krishnan discovered that wh ...
and
Meghnad Saha
Meghnad Saha (6 October 1893 – 16 February 1956) was an Indian astrophysicist who developed the Saha ionization equation, used to describe chemical and physical conditions in stars. His work allowed astronomers to accurately relate the sp ...
for the Public Service Broadcasting Trust of India (PSBT) and the Public Diplomacy Division of the Ministry of External Affairs of India. This film won the
of 2013 and also the prestigious Golden Beaver Award given by the Indian Department of Science and Technology,
Vigyan Prasar, as the Best Public Science Film of 2013. He also produced 2 acclaimed films on Yoga Yoga: Aligning to the Source on the origins, mythology, practice, and history of Yoga was launched on 26 November 2013 and includes appearances by
BKS Iyengar
Bellur Krishnamachar Sundararaja Iyengar (14 December 1918 – 20 August 2014) was an Indian teacher of yoga and author. He is founder of the style of yoga as exercise, known as " Iyengar Yoga", and was considered one of the foremost yoga guru ...
,
Karan Singh
Karan Singh (born 9 March 1931) is an Indian politician and philosopher. He is the son of the last ruling Maharaja of the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir, Sir Hari Singh. He was the prince regent of Jammu and Kashmir until 1952. From 19 ...
and
Devdutt Pattanaik
Devdutt Pattanaik is a mythologist from Mumbai, India. He is also a speaker, illustrator and author, on Hindu sacred lore, legends, folklore, fables and parables. His work focuses largely on the areas of religion, mythology, and management. He ha ...
and India's official film celebrating the International Day of Yoga entitled Yoga Harmony with Nature which was released on 21 June 2015.
In 2023, Raja is completing production of a film for PBS called America's First Guru which tells the story of Swami Vivekananda and how his arrival in Chicago in 1893 led to a spiritual revolution in American culture, words, and consciousness. The film is being distributed in the fall of 2023 by WTTW Chicago.
Public Speaking, Awards & Acclaim
Raja has received numerous awards and media coverage for his work in films and digital media including The 2014
(
India
India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...
) for 2013, The 2014 Golden Beaver Award for Best Indian Public Science Film from
Vigyan Prashar, 2 Webby Awards in 2008, an Adobe Site of the Day and the Milia D’Or at MipCom. In May 2012, Raja presented a talk at the
TED conference
TED Conferences, LLC (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is an American-Canadian non-profit media organization that posts international talks online for free distribution under the slogan "ideas worth spreading". TED was founded by Richard Sau ...
TED@Bangalore on "Indian Wisdom in Today's World". Raja gave a TEDx Talk on "Yoga 3.0" in New Delhi on 21 June 2015 to celebrate the first International Day of Yoga. He also gave the keynote address at the 2015 Porter Prize in New Delhi on "Rewiring the Brain." From 2016 onwards, Raja has given a series of public lectures called Universal Quest with
Dr. Karan Singh
Karan Singh (born 9 March 1931) is an Indian politician and philosopher. He is the son of the last ruling Maharaja of the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir, Sir Hari Singh. He was the prince regent of Jammu and Kashmir until 1952. From 1 ...
at the India International Center in New Delhi, India on Kundalini, Soma, Shiva, The Art and Science of Meditation, Hacking Your Consciousness.
Spiritual Teacher
In 2015, Raja started leading talks and workshops in New Delhi under the Universal Quest banner and they were made available on Youtube attracting thousands of views. As a result in 2018, he was asked to develop a course on the ancient Indian system of
Kundalini
In Hinduism, Kundalini ( sa, कुण्डलिनी, translit=kuṇḍalinī, translit-std=IAST, lit=coiled snake, ) is a form of divine feminine energy (or ''Shakti'') believed to be located at the base of the spine, in the ''muladhara'' ...
for the popular US online platform The Shift Network. His first course Awakening Your Kundalini premiered in March 2018 and since then Raja has taught 11 courses with over 4,000 students and is considered a popular teacher on the network. In 2019, Raja started teaching an Advanced Program on Indian Wisdom on a new online school A Thousand Suns Academy that represents him in the US.
Personal life
Raja married designer
Jagriti Chadha in 2005, and they have a daughter and live in the United States.
Filmography
Major Web and Multimedia Projects
References
External links
*
Raja Choudhury's Official Website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Choudhury, Raja
1964 births
Living people
Filmmakers from Ibadan
Film directors from Delhi
Indian filmmakers
Indian documentary filmmakers
Indian documentary film directors
Indian expatriates in Nigeria
Indian expatriates in the United Kingdom
Indian expatriates in the United States
University of Waterloo alumni
Alumni of the Architectural Association School of Architecture