The setting – A 12 by 12 all-purpose one-room rundown chawl in a crowded suburb of Central Mumbai. The residents – An auto rickshaw driver, Manu Shukla, and his parents. The milieu – A crowded, dark, noisy, smoky bar where Shukla and his friends hang out late evenings after a hard day’s labor, to bond over beer and banter.  Conversations[Read More…]

Review of Munich:  the Edge of War|Netflix, 2022 When I first saw an advertisement for Munich:  The Edge of War appear on my Netflix search screen, my blood pressure rose palpably.  I knew that I had to watch it and that parts of the movie would be objectionable, from a historical and moral point of view.  I avoided watching it[Read More…]

A Film Review Two of the greatest speeches ever delivered by an American president bookend this extraordinary documentary film.  It opens with President John F. Kennedy giving the commencement speech at American University on June 10, 1963 and it closes with his civil rights speech to the American people the following day.  It is a deft artistic touch that suggests the brevity of[Read More…]

This was the Christmas my young daughter finally cornered me into admitting that Father Christmas doesn’t exist. I felt a small pang of regret that she had taken another step towards graduating into the less colourful world of adulthood, but also a larger sense of relief that I could now stop lying to her. What a few years ago seemed[Read More…]

  In recent years, the Tamil cinema has seen a flurry of films mainstreaming Dalit narratives that bare the underbelly of a regressive caste driven society. As Dr. Biju, the Malayalam director of “Veyil Marangal” fame had posted on Facebook that the Tamil filmgoers, unlike their Malayalam counterparts, receive anti-caste narratives with great fervour and essential gravitas. Written and directed by T[Read More…]

In a society divided along caste and class lines, violence against the marginalised groups either does not attract the attention of society at large or the oppression per se tends to be seen as normal. The pattern of silence is in favour of the dominant groups. There is no abnormality seen in violence perpetrated by the dominant groups either directly[Read More…]

Eva Orner, the Academy Award-winning filmmaker for her movie Taxi to the Dark Side comes up with a burning issue this time through her latest documentary, Burning. That’s about the recurring bushfires happening in Australia which no longer can’t be ignored. The film that had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival -2021 last month will certainly spark[Read More…]

You’ve either seen the Netflix show Squid Game, considered watching the South Korean series before giving it a pass because of its violence, or read about it and wondered what all the fuss is about. You know, therefore, that this global hit is about hundreds of indebted Koreans competing against one another for a huge jackpot. The competitions are children’s games[Read More…]

A film on struggles of slum-dwellers, won the first top international award for India Much before the advent of the new wave in Indian cinema, during the decade of the 1950s several films of great social commitment which reflected the ideals of the freedom movement. However what is even more remarkable is that even before independence, braving the even higher[Read More…]

Southern superstar Dhanush’s Tamil film ‘Karnan’ has been released on OTT platform on Amazon Prime Video. The film had earlier been released in cinemas. The film, which was screened in Corona, is getting huge response from the audience. The most interesting thing is that breaking the linguistic wall, the film is being favored from south to north. This has been[Read More…]

As the City of Toronto is less than a week away from the ‘Festival of Festivals’ Indian Cinema has nothing much to write home about except two movies, although the total number of films selected for screening is one-third of its usual strength. And that too not from the major filmmakers. Nithin Lukose’s PAKA (River of Blood) and Ritwik Pareek’s[Read More…]

This year in January we commemorated the centenary of Charlie Chaplin’s1st motion film ‘The Kid.’ No doubt such a film would be outdated today, in the days of high tech,artificial intelligence, mechanisation or  automation. However it still has significance when the forces of globalization are tightening their noose in every sphere of life and putting a stranglehold on all democratic[Read More…]

The recent development in Tamil movie has received much appreciation among the intellectuals for portraying Dalit character as protagonist and bringing caste realities onto the screen. It has elevated Dalits from a stereotypical passive receiver of others sympathy to an active agent seeking justice. However, it is also criticized for merely replacing the social location of the typical hero in[Read More…]

You would have gone to the forest 100 times, but could spot a tiger only once. But, be rest assured, the tiger would have spotted you 99 times. In the midst of a recent conversation, Malayalam writer and film maker Unni R. asked if I had seen Amit Masurkar’s OTT-released Hindi film Sherni. Unni asked this question in the context[Read More…]

Afghanistan is making the headlines again. The anxieties have increased following an irresponsible and a rushed withdrawal of the US troops. If it is any indication of things to come, the Bagram base was ransacked after US troops left in the dead of the night, leaving Afghan army and civilians to themselves. Commentators have been projecting a deadly picture of[Read More…]

India’s Hindi film industry produces the largest number of films in the world, but they barely tackle the question of gender justice while women characters in cinema are almost always peripheral. In the last few years, however, things seem to be changing. There is now a growing number of films that focus on gender justice. Women-centric films such as “Pink,[Read More…]

Jean Luc Godard very rightfully claimed, ‘It is not where you take things from- it is where you take them to’. Reading this quote in the light of the recently released Netflix series Ray and its criticism that followed brings up a lot many questions. Ray, divided into four episodes, is based on Satyajit Ray’s stories. The world crafted by[Read More…]

In the history of Hindi film industry no actor ever took intensity to such mythical proportions or regions as Dilip Kumar. In full flow Dilip Kumar could create the impact of an inferno or Tsunami .His acting possessed that rare quality of a genius, literally sculpting a new dimension to acting. No superstar looked as natural as Dilip Kumar, as[Read More…]

In whodunnits, two universal patterns can be seen as emerging. First, The murderer is suggestive of the vicious society at large; that s/he is part of the system that normalises killing. Then, the killer’s vengeance was not indeed aimed at the victims, but at the world which has already symbolically murdered him or her. These patterns, subtly different from each[Read More…]

When I saw Umberto D. recently I was so complete engrossed in it that I completely forgot where I was for some time. What is it that makes a senior citizen in India today identify so completely with the elderly character of  a film made in Italy and that too about seven decades back in 1952? I may be at[Read More…]

This is my list of best Hindi films portraying the struggle for a social cause in order of merit. Albert Pinto Ko Gussa Kyu Aata Hai (1980) A plot is superbly woven without any element of melodrama to reveal the life of the Bombay Industrial workers and the mechanism or machinations that revolved around their day to day lives. In[Read More…]

It seems so long ago when ( in the 1970s)  the new wave cinema was promising to shake up the film scene leading to wider possibilities of  more durable improvements in the overall quality of cinema. Certainly the high expectations were not confined to just Hindi cinema, although predictably this was talked about more. I remember travelling a long distance[Read More…]

My best films portraying women as a liberator or crusader against injustice, selected in order of merit. Mirch Masala(1987) How relevant this movie is today is expressed with rapes taking place regularly in India in every nook and corner. Oppression of women has reached a crescendo in the era of globalisation, masking itself as development.Mirch Masala literally hits the nail[Read More…]

‘Sparsh’ is the ultimate classic or best ever Hindi film portraying the blind and amongst the best Hindi films ever. Energy of the blind taken to mystical  proportions with touches of genius ‘Sparsh’  made in 1980 is possibly the best ever Hindi film in my view championing the blind or of any handicapped person. It makes us understand that morally[Read More…]

Spending too much money on big-budget productions is not advisable when the film industry, by and large, sleeps as an after-effect of the present pandemic. As a result, micro-budget movies have been conceived, shot and released worldwide in different genres. That’s how the films like SEE YOU SOON, THE GREAT INDIAN KITCHEN, IRUL, WOLF etc came out in Malayalam through[Read More…]

Hindi cinema is not exactly known for any consistent contribution to human rights. Nevertheless some outstanding films have been made from time to time which have proved to be of enduring value for advancing various aspects of human rights and civil liberties. In V. Shantaram’s Do Ankhen Barah Hath the cause of jail reform is so important for an idealist[Read More…]

When the fourth segment of the Rising Garden Film Festival, hosted by Sangat feminist network and the Kriti Film Club, as part of the One Billion Rising South Asia’s 2021 campaign, comes to an end on Monday, the filmmakers, organisers and viewers together say that the film fiesta became a global phenomenon, amidst pandemic. Gamze Ineceli, an active viewer of the festival[Read More…]

The social thriller movie can be a very effective and useful genre of cinema. Social thriller movies are those thriller films which make a more conscious and emphatic effort to raise some important issues of social concern or to convey a strong socially relevant message. These are an important means of taking socially relevant messages to film viewers. Unfortunately this[Read More…]

Many dacoit films have been made in Hindi cinema, against the background of Chambal region and also in other contexts. But most of these do not go beyond violence, revenge and romance. In fact some of these with the exaggerated importance these give to seeking revenge as well with long drawn-out violence sequences  can have quite a negative impact on[Read More…]

War films can easily degenerate into war propaganda and narrow nationalism. However there are other war films which vividly bring out the inherent pain and destructiveness of war in sensitive ways and hence, whatever their story content,  also convey a message of peace. It is true that war films made in any  country are often aimed at bringing out mainly[Read More…]

I am here selecting my top fifteen Hindi movies in terms of portrayal of social reality. My criteria is not entertainment or idealism but level of doing justice to realism. I must particularly complement the likes of Shabana Azmi and Smita Patil for championing so many roles portraying realism. 1.DO BIGHA ZAMEEN In a most artistic manner it reveals the[Read More…]

Dr Siju Vijayan is passionate about his new film, Insha, which is a story that is true to this world that we live in. This is the reason why Insha is a trailblazer because stories about disabled people are not often told and are not often told with this much authenticity. Dr. Vijayan’s impetus of his debut film – Insha,[Read More…]

The post-independence years are regarded by many as the golden age of Hindi cinema. The idealism of  the freedom movement was still alive and this was reflected well in the films of those days. Since many Hindi films tend to be more dominated by heroes or the male lead roles, the idealist film hero  figured significantly in many films and[Read More…]

   On March 12th today, we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the movie Anand ,made in 1971.Without doubt the film was amongst the finest, most touching or soul searching movies ever to have flashed the Bollywood screen..In my view late Rajesh Khanna as ‘Anand’ gave one of the finest performances ever on the silver screen. His co-actor Amitabh Bachchan as[Read More…]

Food stories have always attracted me, be they about the everyday available homely food, meat barbeque by a group of friends en route an adventurous camping or exquisite high-class dining. I believe each of these stories has its own share of bitter-sweet plots and characters. Motivated by my love for food and themes around it, I decided to write about[Read More…]

In the history of Indian societies ‘marriage’ as an institution has garnered a special place and has been ubiquitous in all sections and classes of the society. Within this finding a groom is a very seasoned activity. Mira Nair’s newest web series ‘A suitable boy’ is an adaptation of a novel by the same name authored by Vikram Seth in[Read More…]

My feeling that a poet, who called cinema a sycophant of literature would have approved Aravindan, a director who explored the medium’s possibilities, lends courage to me. This is uncannily similar to the feeling that Tagore, for a moment was stunned by what Wilfred Owen’s mother had revealed to him. I’m sure Tagore would have dumped the NBT calendar. It[Read More…]

The idea of ‘return’ holds different meanings for different people caught in different circumstances. Calcutta-based Supriyo Sen’s Abar Ashibo Phirey (Way Back Home, Bangla with English sub-titles, video, colour, 120 mins, 2002) is a wrenching and liberating journey into the heart and soul of an elderly Bengali couple – the director’s parents – as they go back in time, space[Read More…]

In 2014, Joshy Joseph directed a long documentary called A Poet, A City & A Footballer which won him the Special Jury Prize at the national awards. The film is about juxtapositions, like night and day, abundant life and impending death, energy amidst decay, and silence that shouts to be heard. The film is a meditation on death, but it[Read More…]

The Symphony  No 5 was inside Beethovan’s brain, when he first conceived it. A group of musicians invoke that experience, aurally, from the atmosphere every time they meet to perform. And a sound, non-existent before, suddenly acquires tones of flesh and blood. The cinema, like music, is an art of time, film makers have said. Rabindranath Tagore called it an[Read More…]

Laal Juto (Red Shoes, Bangla, 23 minutes, 35 mm, colour), adapted from a short story by the iconic Bengali writer, artist and intellectual Kamal Kumar Majumdar, is about 15-year-old Nitish who goes to a shoe shop to buy shoes for himself. What Nitish had not bargained for is a self-discovery leading to a change in his feelings towards Gouri, his[Read More…]

This essay is dedicated to the example of Father Stan Swamy, S. J. Briefly and simply put, Liberation Theology is a school of thinking which proclaims that methods of direct action are at times necessary for the material and spiritual liberation of the poor and powerless; that prayer and persuasion have to be occasionally accompanied by frontal assault to produce[Read More…]

From the life and times of the State executioner, Nata Mullick (which was the subject of an earlier documentary, One Day From A Hangman’s Life), the Calcutta-based Films Division filmmaker, Joshy Joseph, transported us to the life and times of a young Manipuri named Tom Sharma, by means of Making The Face, a shorter film but which nonetheless took a[Read More…]

“I planned Thampu as a documentary feature. It was shot in Thirunnavaya on the banks of the Bharathapuzha. I came to this village with ten to fifteen circus artistes who had already left their circus company. We did not have a script and we shot the incidents as they happened. What we did on the first day was to call[Read More…]

Endurance of pain is an idea directly drawn from Christianity. However, in the Indian context, historically, endurance of pain is regarded as un-knowledge, avidya (in Sanskrit an antonym of knowledge, but not ignorance) and nonexistent. It is just not there, here, or anywhere. When the “I, myself” does not exist, who is left to endure pain?  This is how the[Read More…]

Mysore Shrinivas Sathyu, who turned ninety on July 6 this year, is an important figure in the annals of New Indian Cinema by virtue of just one film- Garam Hawa (Hot Winds, 1974), a scathing dissection of the diseased mentalities that caused the Partition of the country (read, Partition of Bengal and Punjab). Garam Hawa achieves its purpose by portraying[Read More…]

Cinematic aesthetic in a public space is defined by the sensibilities of such a space. Dictating these sensibilities becomes the privilege of a dominant hegemonic group. Consequently, it panders to clichés and tropes that simultaneously borrow from and lend to a collective imagination – strengthening it with each rendition. Eventually, repeat renditions become the unchallenged mainstay of a popular narrative,[Read More…]

  The simplest form of a question, addressed by indefinite horde communities from hitherto. The reply always varied spatially and temporally. ‘A FILM BY’, a hackneyed yet modish way to address a cinema by the film makers, is a lesser film maker ideology, suggests Nasruddin Shah, a prominent mainstream actor of the era. A complete filmmaker, Charlie Chaplin, never used[Read More…]

Human beings distinguish themselves from other animal species by, inter alia, their ability to communicate elaborately through multiple languages. Over time, the spoken languages have also been transformed into written languages, bringing a visuality and cognition to the language which also made possible recording of history and creation of literature, essentially extending the reach and precision of language over time,[Read More…]

Adoor Gopalakrishnan is, unfortunately, ‘at it’ again. Kerala’s best-known filmmaker was recently at his favourite pastime of hitting a contemporary below the belt; trying to belittle someone with whom he started out on his filmmaking journey almost half a century ago. Honestly, I have noted with a mixture of disappointment and disgust, Adoor’s venomous remarks against K.P. Kumaran, as made[Read More…]

Some time ago, another edition of International Women’s Day was observed with the right amount of feistiness. Among other things, women-related films were screened and discussed in some places in this or that city. Two early documentaries by Mira Nair could perhaps have been profitably included in such programmes. Unfortunately, her documentary films have been little seen and less discussed.[Read More…]

The overwhelming triumph of the film is its portrayal of same-sex love. It is arguably India’s first serious film about bisexuality. Muhammad Razi’s Velutha Rathrikal (White Nights) is one of the most exciting debuts in recent times among independent film-makers in South India. From the looks of it, the film seems unpromising. Yet another adaptation of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s story ‘White Nights’ (there have[Read More…]

A hundred years ago, a silent film called Bilet Pherat (England-Returned) was made. That pioneering work placed its maker by the side of such greats of early Indian cinema as Dadasaheb Phalke and Hiralal Sen. The example and exploits of Dhirendranath Gangopadhyay, or DG, as he was popularly known, were been recalled on many occasions by Mrinal Sen or Dinen[Read More…]

As a protagonist of Telangana state, it was a kind of a dream movie for me. There are many reasons for it. One of the first reasons was the “local accent” of the movie.  I was never comfortable with the Andhra accent that smacked of “internal colonialism” in the Telugu movies both in accent and content. It reflects the urge[Read More…]

Review of “A Poet, a City and a Footballer” “Men, music, light, landscape, color and motion brought into one integral whole by a single piercing emotion, by a single theme and idea – this is the aim of modern cinematography.”  Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein (1898-1948)[1] Introduction A/ Musical foreword The movie begins with a song of Rabindranath Tagore, a song interpreted[Read More…]

With Chaitanya Tamhane’s second film, The Disciple, headed to the Venice International Film Festival in September, it may be worthwhile recalling, Court, his first film that bagged the National Award for Best Feature Film in 2015. As we live through the COVID moment witnessing the targetting of students, teachers, and poets, Court’s damning testimony of caste oppression and its tribute[Read More…]

Every time I returned to Mumbai, I looked forward to reading the pocket-cartoons of RK Laxman. Though everything changes around him, the common man, with his studied silence witnessing twists and turns, had looked the same for decades, in the pocket cartoon of THE TIMES OF INDIA front page.  It gave me a sense of permanence. Every time I made[Read More…]

Ethical media practices have constantly engaged with creating more space for under-privileged, and under-represented voices. With the advent of the pandemic, social distancing, and the necessary isolation of quarantines and containment zones, representing and communicating the common man’s woes and perspective has become a daunting, but doubly urgent,task. This is especially exacerbated when those in power take advantage of the[Read More…]

            Fifty two years ago, on 20th August, Russian tanks moved into Prague to suppress what has passed into history as the ‘Spring of 1968’ when artists, intellectuals, public personalities and reforms-minded politicians joined hands in an attempt to secure freedom of expression. Among the sufferers was the great long-distance runner, Emil Zatopek, who was dismissed from his senior position[Read More…]

(This essay is in commemoration of the birth centenary this year of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Bangladesh’s Father of the Nation; and the fiftieth anniversary of the making of Zahir Raihan’s Stop Genocide, with which the history of short filmmaking in Bangladesh begins.) A road accident on August 19, 2011, robbed Bangladesh of its most exceptional filmmaker, and this writer[Read More…]

K. P. Kumaran made his first film, Athithi (b/w, 35 mm., 112 mins.) in 1974. I was able to catch up with it in 2017, thanks to a retrospective devoted to the veteran director at the 22nd edition of the International Film Festival of Kerala. Athithi is a tense family drama that unfolds, for the most part, within the ghostly[Read More…]

The first edition of what began as the Bombay International Film Festival for Documentary & Short Films (there was no mention of animation in the naming then) was held between March 1 and 7, 1990. I had no place to stay in Bombay, yet the will to attend the festival was strong. One evening, over a cup of tea at[Read More…]

“Beyond the geographic and cultural identity that defines the Caribbean, is the more complex question of a Caribbean cinema aesthetic which has captured the imagination of some writers and critics. The search for the essence of Caribbean cinema has included theories of Créolité, diversity and Negritude from Martinique and Guadeloupe; Negrismo from Cuba; Indigenisme from Haiti; and Pan-Africanism from the[Read More…]

Yilmaz Güney’s phenomenal many-sided genius made him a force to reckon with when he came to direction after a long stint as Turkey’s most popular film hero. But in the post-Second World War history of the Turkish State and society, Güney occupies a higher place than just that of a trail-blazing film personality. His strong sympathies for the inhabitants of[Read More…]

I am not a polyglot. I am unbeknownst to Urdu-my mother’s language for I am the unfortunate generation who learnt English as well as Urdu sonnets but without Urdu in its script and is one who can hardly scramble through Urdu in its Persian form, just by virtue of tying its tit-bits conforming ever to their orthographic details. But, I[Read More…]

In 1963, Satyajit Ray directed Mahanagar, commonly considered to be his first ‘Calcutta film’. True, there is a little of the ‘Big City’ in Apur Sansar (1959). Equally true, Parash Pathar (1958) is about an elderly Calcutta clerk who comes into a sudden fortune, only to lose it in no time. But Parash Pathar is a fantasy film, can perhaps[Read More…]

In 1989 an incident happened in the prosperous suburbs of North Tehran that inspired the making of a movie. The movie took exactly 40 days to shoot, edit and then release and had no functioning script. It may be the most amazing movie you will ever see, (if you have not seen it already) and could be the best 97[Read More…]

They say “the art of art, the glory of expression, and the sunshine of the light of letters, is simplicity.” And indeed, there is something mystic about simplicity. And watching “Walking Over Water” was a similar kind of experience for me. It was earthy and fresh. A child always gets stuck in between the never ending quarrel of parents. This[Read More…]

Special note: Don’t read about any of the films mentioned here prior to watching them. This “review” won’t spoil anything. “I remember loving The Promise over twenty years ago.” — Annapurna Tosca Sriramarcel “The Son is my favorite work of theirs.” — Rachel Olivia O’Connor When we first meet Jenny Davin (Adèle Haenel) of the Dardennes brothers’ The Unknown Girl (La Fille Inconnue) — the smart, uncompromising[Read More…]

Director Stephen Frears’s Victoria and Abdul, based on the book of the same name by Shrabani Basu, draws upon the diaries of Abdul Karim (1863–1909) that were published in 2010. Karim was an Indian clerk who shared an unusual bond with Queen Victoria in the last fifteen years of her life, which shook up the royal household and British upper[Read More…]

Lakshman Rekha, a film by Geetika Tondon looks at how conversations in the media are played out in cases of sexual assault in India. This twenty minute short premiered in July 2016 at the inaugural session of the Film Club, Centre for Women’s Studies, University of Hyderabad, in the presence of the film maker. The film was followed by an[Read More…]

“A Bitter Lime” is a variously funny to  Kafkaesque movie about a rich and young but disenchanted First World couple leaving Los Angeles for Georgetown in Third World  Guyana. A beautifully filmed and poetic movie, “A Bitter Lime” touches on escapism, existential angst, North-South, Man-Nature and love.  Directed by Australian Max De Bowen (Max Orter) , “A Bitter Lime” is[Read More…]

It is more often a rare experience to be a part of a ‘critical insider’ while being with a movie. Politics is also very rarely seen in the ‘foreground’ in the ‘making’ of a movie – the most widely visible practice is to place it in the ‘background.’ What politically goes in between these spaces (background and foreground) is also[Read More…]