When I was completing the edit of my film ‘Remembering Bimal Roy‘ on my father, my editor asked me who would do the final sound design. This was the first time I heard the term sound design and realised that my documentary would need one. Shajith By sheer serendipity a dear friend Meena Pillai mentioned that […]
Learn More
Have you ever had the opportunity to observe an actor observing himself? Naseeruddin Shah: The Angel of Chaos Early Noughties, Mumbai. In a sultry Mumbai studio, poet extraordinaire Gulzar’s face flickers on a mounted screen. He’s paying a tribute to Naseeruddin Shah, today’s guest on the sets of Jeena Isi ka Naam Hai, one of […]
Learn More
To my sorrow I never really got to know my father. I sometimes feel that if he had lived longer, perhaps my brother, Joy Bimal Roy, or I could have worked with him and learnt the craft in a way that no school or textbook can teach. But my father did not really like us visiting […]
Learn More
A tragedy in three parts, each separated by prolonged blackouts, The Disciple takes shape using the Indian classical music fraternity as one big metaphor to demonstrate how in today’s world of self-promotion and exaggerated marketing, degradation has occurred in almost every field, and how our blinded attitudes are responsible for the distortion of many of […]
Learn More
Artist Warning: this analysis of The Disciple contains spoilers. Artist The protagonist of The Disciple, Sharad Nerulkar, above all is a seeker, and is deeply in love with music, aspiring for absolute union with his art; thus making this a love story, albeit, not a conventional one. The conflict in its external form is society and […]
Learn More
Shot in a vertical aspect ratio, Yudhajit Basu’s Kalsubai attempts a layering of consciousness that is, at base, hierarchical. The shot, which is between the ‘On’ and ‘Off’, gestures on the recording button on the camera and is a rhizomatic construct i.e., it connects one middle to the next middle. Basu’s attempt however is to challenge this […]
Learn More
Reminiscence of how REQUIEM came to be I dreamt that Ma and I were stranded in a rocky barren landscape in the dead of night. It was pitch dark with no humans or illumination in sight. We were completely isolated from the world. Ma was whimpering in pain and crying for help. In my dream […]
Learn More
Set in the location-space that is the village of Arittapatti in Tamil Nadu, Pebbles (Koozhangal) immediately establishes the Oedipal relationship between the chain smoking, drunk Ganpathy and his son. The two take a bus ride together, the view of the window of which emphasises the cinematographic screen that is between the love-hate relationship between director, audience and […]
Learn More
Joji — a comparative study of four Macbeth inspirations Literary works provide off-the-shelf fast food in the pecking order for film makers to ply their trade when writers’ block bite them. However, a majority of these “inspired” adaptations by filmmakers have always been a tricky and tacky proposition. Only a very few stay true to […]
Learn More
Utpal Datta converses with Supratim Bhol, the cinematographer of Avijatrik, lit., the wanderlust of Apu, purportedly the concluding part of Satyajit Ray’s Apu trilogy based on the remaining portions of the novel Aparajito by Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay. A film is a sort of a dream, a combination of imaginary images in the mind of the […]
Learn More