I missed the first International Film Festival of India, because I was too young to be allowed to see the festival films. There was a precondition that only ‘adults’ were allowed to see the programmes. I had to wait my time. The late Ms. Amita Malik, who was then a broadcaster in All India Radio […]
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Weighed in by the baggage of Bollywood and chasing the chimera of star power to pull audiences to international film festival seems to have taken the sheen off IFFI, & Goa as a film destination is losing its ground. “Being at a film festival reminds me of the power of film. The power that […]
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In the Indian subcontinent, the tradition of film festivals goes back to 1952, when the first International Film Festival of India (IFFI) took place, in Mumbai. It gave birth to a new league of Indian filmmakers, such as the Bengali trio Satyajit Ray, Ritwik Ghatak and Mrinal Sen, who would revolutionize Indian cinema, in the […]
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Women centric films, in the garb of female empowerment, have become the new normal in Bollywood lately. Focusing on issues that women negotiate in today’s times, these films seek to provide a new ideological template by which they seek audiences’ indulgence in the dramaturgy they unspool through their women protagonists. Taking incidents from real life, […]
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Since 2004, cinema audiences from other parts of the country have started converging to the State of Goa at least once a year to witness international cinema. In the process some effort has been made to rediscover if Goa ever had a tradition of films. Before cinema came to make any inroads in this small […]
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Man is a political animal. So reflected Aristotle. He went a step further to see politics and culture as by-products of nature. Man is given speech and moral reason as natural, inborn, gifts. So, any further device, or design, such as politics, must be natural, Aristotle thought. History is an interesting play of power – […]
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Walking down the roads of Calcutta very many years ago, a college youth remarked to his friend, “If I can make an Assamese cinema I would attain salvation.” Thus began the history of Assamese cinema. The incident happened at the beginning of the second decade of the last century. The author of these words, and […]
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I know that you are no more. But I am, alive for you Believe me. When the seventh seal is opened I will use my camera as my gun and I am sure the echo of the sound will reverberate in your bones, and feed back to me for my inspiration. – John Abraham about […]
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Anurag Kashyap’s chief strength is his sharp eye for the milieu but his films also seem curiously blank – as if there was little else underneath surface. Since his style is so visceral, one wishes they were informed by some understanding of behavior and politics but, reflect as deeply as one might, one finds neither […]
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Manipur, on the easternmost part of India, bordering with Mynmar (Burma) is a small state having rich cultural heritage and charming landscape; its people are endowed with inborn talents in dance, drama and music; it has a thousand year old history with uniqueness of its own kind. Manipur had the experience of viewing peep show […]
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