Face to face — the cinema of Adoor Gopalakrishnan
Sathya Saran | July 03
The book delineates the “major political, social and cultural landscapes that inform the cinema of Adoor.” This I believe is quite necessary in a country in which, increasingly, divisions between states, regions and cultural and religious beliefs are getting deeper as people draw tight the strings of their identities to exclude others…
… It traces the development and growth of the maker’s artistic and creative genius that would place him among the cinematic greats of the world… Perhaps it will encourage the re-release of Adoor Gopalakrishnan’s films with subtitles, so a wider audience can view and appreciate them. In Adoor’s films lie a window to a greater understanding of the Indian psyche, which, thanks to this book, might be opened wider.
Pandemic pummels cinema into existential vortex
S Viswanath | August 15
After a great gambol run for 125 years since its birth, the moving images industry, more prominent by its popular moniker ‘Entertainment Industry’ has been finally zapped by existential crisis pressing the rethink button.
Meena Kumari
Darshana Goswami | August 01
Much has been said about Meena Kumari’s expressive eyes, yet her expressions and her body language are always subtle and understated, leaving us wanting to know more and to hear more. Her beauty adorned with gossamer veils and downcast eyes tell us to look deep into her inner being, and deeper still.
Meena Kumari was one who closely experienced life’s fragility and its many deceptions, and she trained herself to live life in moments and not let go of any opportunity that could make her happy. Her life certainly cannot be defined by stereotypical terms such as ‘tragedy queen’ or ‘queen of sorrows.’ She is not mythical Hecate, the melancholy goddess, constantly shedding tears, buried in sighs and laments. Instead, her indecisiveness and volatility compelled her to continuously search for a new meaning in life, forever going past whatever she had in life thus far.
Ideology matters — film criticism in new Malayalam cinema
Premchand | July 18
The arthouse films could never serve as a real parallel. It had to yield to the power play of state-run machineries, the way mainstream films were, and still are, to private production houses…
… Post-1991, the threat of advertisement ban has made criticism near impossible—ads being a major source of revenue. Capital is becoming more arrogant and intolerant towards criticism in any form.
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Tape 39: Memory as Document, Memory as Map Maker
Devdutt Trivedi | August 10
The cinematograph can be defined as a writing with movements and sound. The essential problematic of the cinematograph lies precisely within this question—how can the cinematograph move beyond the manifest reality? This manifest reality is the apparent space and time represented before the camera.
A 40-year-old Love Story
Utpal Datta | July 09
Rahul Rawal’s specialty was to adorn Love Story with his own aesthetic skills, ignoring the prevailing notions. The name Love Story evokes a kind of poetic tone and the director was keen to preserve that tone and mood through out the film… Even later, Rahul Rawal’s harsh and rude reality based films like Dakait and Arjun were a continuation of the poetic beauty of the loneliness and the elegant picturisation. Rahul Rawal and especially Love Story are still relevant today because of the creativity shown in making a mainstream commercial film, a sensitive work of cinematic art. Sadly, the identity of Rahul Rawal was not engraved on the body of the film in which he was established.