Gautam Chatterjee was born in Varanasi in a Bengali family. He did his post graduation in Mathematics from Banaras Hindu University(BHU) and received PhD also from BHU. His thesis was based on the interface of Indian dramatics and Agamas. He started his career as a Journalist in 1981 and has written columns for various national and regional newspapers and magazines including The Hindu[1], Swatantra Bharat, Amar Ujala[2] and Rashtriya Sahara. While working as a journalist he got interested in World Cinema and was highly influeced by works of Ingmar Bergman and Krzysztof kieslowski. He wrote extensively on Cinema during his career and also authored a book on the same subject titled Classic Cinema[3]. As a journalist he has done long interviews with many illustrious contemporary artists like Satyajit Ray, Kumar Gandharva, Kavalam Narayana Panicker and Kelucharan Mohapatra. These interviews have been published by Penguin India in the book Shikhar Se Samvaad[4][5].
His book Abhinay Shastra is a detailed study on the Indian style of acting [6][7]. He has elaborately explained the subtle aspects of Indian classical music in his book Agamas in Indian Dramatics and Musicology[8][9]. He has translated Abhinavgupta's encyclopedic treatise Tantraloka from Sankrit to English in six volumes[10][11][12][13]. His book on Tantra philosophy titled The White Shadow of Consciousness[14] was published in 2012. He was profoundly inspired by Pt Gopinath Kaviraj's magnum opus Jnanaganja, he translated the book from Bengali into English, the book was published with the title Jnanaganja - A Space for timeless divinity in 2014[15][16].
As a playwright, he has written a number of plays, these have been published in 2 books, Adhure Raag(1996) and Dashrupak(2006)[17]. He has conducted acting workshops in various parts of the counrty for over 3 decades.
Gautam Chatterjee is a published poet. His poetry collection was published in 2017 under the title Anand Bhairavi[18]
He started making films in 2010 and has been working on creating a new language of cinema which he has termed as Visual Poetry.
He is a recipient of the Nad Vachaspati award[19] and Ravi Dave Smriti Samman.[20][21]
