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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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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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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Art cinema in India began as a movement partly in order to intervene in social injustices by propagating the right attitudes among the public, although popular cinema had also done it much earlier. Dalits and caste discrimination have frequently been the subjects in Indian cinema from Achhut Kanya (1936) to Sairat (2016) and the general […]
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Stories narrated in a dramatic manner attract and engage the masses, especially those from the lower strata whose daily lives are filled with struggle. ‘Masala,’ ‘escapist fare’ offers them nostalgia, inspiration, strength and hope. For, the cinema crafted for them is kinder than their unchanging reality. This causal relationship between income class and preference for […]
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