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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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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