August 1 this year saw journalist Ravish Kumar being awarded the 2019 Ramon Magsaysay Award—the Asian equivalent of the Nobel Prize—for “harnessing journalism to give voice to the voiceless.” That is the ideal with which I had joined journalism, this very month of 1978. More than 40 monsoons have gone by since I had crossed […]
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Being an effective mass medium, cinema has for long been manipulated for the celebration of national pride and for the recognition of they who demonstrate the highest form of sacrifice and valour. The ‘soldier theme’ has been a favorite of quite a few popular Hindi filmmakers from JP Dutta to Anil Sharma. Subhash Ghai’s Karma […]
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It is rare to find an Indian film so universally lauded as an artistic and intellectual achievement – by achievers in their own right – as Anand Gandhi’s Ship of Theseus has been. Gandhi’s film is also unusual in that it is intended as philosophical reflection rather than social critique, which has been the normal […]
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There are film directors who create film stars and then there are film directors who become stars themselves. Since cinema started as a means of business, stars and star film directors have both co existed. A star could not survive without a good film director but a star film director could thrive without stars. Each […]
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Cinema has come a long way from a time when long dialogues struck gold at the box-office and cemented a struggling protagonist’s position as a dependable hero to a time when it is cool to be conversational. Alongside, the big screen has ceded much of its audience to the small screen. Clearly, it is not […]
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Liberals in the sub-continent feel compelled to take certain political positions more in order to define themselves than because the positions are defensible. There is a deliberate propagation of half-truths and untruths in the service of the ‘correct’, the understanding being that the ‘morally correct’ and the ‘true’ are not synonymous. Mira Nair’s The Reluctant […]
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A case study of the Toulouse Indian Film Festival Cinema is an important medium, and is highly responsible worldwide in constructing otherness.[1] Film industries, since time immemorial, have been aware of this power that it holds, and several papers on this aspect using Hollywood as an example are available.[2] This present study is a result […]
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The cinema market of Kolkata/West Bengal has primarily been dominated by Bengali cinema since the last 5 years. The market leader is Venkatesh Films, a company with huge production & distribution networks. The company produces both critically acclaimed art as well as blockbuster commercial films. Additionally, it produces fiction and non-fiction reality shows for […]
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Hindi films about Indians traveling abroad have captured the imagination of the audience – if the successes of Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara, Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani and Queen are any indication. These films are targeted at metropolitan/ multiplex audiences, those likely to be more aligned with the global world than with rural India which is only […]
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Our primary research on French spectators of Indian films was conducted nearly a decade ago: the ideal age for a first assessment. At present, although reception studies have begun taking hold in France, there are very few publications for the subject. Firstly, working on the audience-level reception is still not fashionable, and secondly, it is […]
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