Pandemic pummels cinema into existential vortex Don’t open the pod bay doors, Hal. We need social distancing. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) Nothing can be alarmingly apocryphal than the above lines from the nearly four decade old film. ‘Social Distancing’ has become the new lingua franca of human transaction in this pandemic times […]
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Film: Tape 39 | presently streaming on Mubi Director: Amit Dutta 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 […]
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Throughout the history of cinema, the dominant ideology determined the content. It is predominantly capitalistic, male and heterosexual. Likewise, film criticism too established its territory. Malayalam cinema Tracing back to the fifties, film criticism popularised by the trio Cinic, Kozhikodan, and Nadhirsha was mostly engaged with the text, rarely exploring the sub-text, inner dynamics, or […]
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Hindi Film world is a huge store house of love stories i.e films. But only a few films, especially love stories, had made lasting impression upon the viewers and one fine day they receive the title of cult film. Love Story, released on February 26, 1981, is a movie without a director’s name. Hindi films […]
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That reviewer Parthajit Baruah is well read, as professors of English (and cinema) should be, is clear from the number of references to literature as well as quotes from books that he uses in ‘Face to Face – The Cinema of Adoor Gopalakrishnan’ to illustrate his points. That he is completely cued in to the […]
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In an interview during his television days, Sushant Singh Rajput was asked about his favourite book. He sheepishly replied that he wasn’t into reading, but if he were to pick one he’d pick his Physics text book, because he didn’t understand it at one go, and had to spend a lot of time with it. […]
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Film: Ghormua Director: Mukul Haloi Duration: 25 mins Language: Assamese Award: Winner of the Cinema Experimenta Award at SiGNS Gilles Deleuze defines a crystalline-image as that image in which the transparent actual image and the opaque virtual image simultaneously exist. For Deleuze, when Scottie in Alfred Hithcock’s Vertigo makes Judy into Madeleine he has juxtaposed the […]
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Of all the genres of mass culture, cinema is arguably the most popular and universal, yet it is also the most intricate. Cinema is rigorous multi tasking and meticulous teamwork. It is the ultimate example of intermedia art that brings together an assortment of technological expertise and artistic insight. In cinema we see people like […]
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‘I would never say such an unfeeling, rude thing such as that all actors are cattle. What I probably said was that all actors should be treated like cattle.’ actor -Alfred Hitchcock, on the Dick Cavett show ‘Most enjoyable screen performances have been produced by nothing more than a typage, and it is commonplace […]
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Rishi Kapoor — Tujh mein kya hai deewane A Bengali film buff growing up in 1980s small town India was overwhelmed with a plethora of influences. On the one hand there was the Shyam Benegal and Govind Nihalani universe. Sunday afternoons were about “regional cinema”, where one was gradually getting exposed to names like Adoor […]
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