We have had countless guests in Godiwala Bungalow but the memory of one stands out above the rest. Ritwik Ghatak Sometime in the early ’70s a Bengali gentleman landed up unannounced at home. He looked like he had seen better days. His entire demeanour was one of defeat, someone at the end of his tether. […]
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Every Bombayite of our generation had heard of Protima Gupta. She was the ultimate enfant terrible. People spoke in hushed whispers about her streaking through Samovar restaurant. For those who came in late streaking was big in the ’70s in the west. It meant running through a public place stark naked usually as a protest […]
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digital What has caused the death of single screen theatres? Unlike in the past when were they were the only platform for watching feature films, today a variety of alternative media are readily available. The technological wave has effectively ensured that the spectator isn’t required to travel any distance at all to watch their desired […]
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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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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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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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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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Cinema screening was revived last week in Anantnag when a local theatre [highlight background=”#f79126″ color=”#ffffff”]Heewan[/highlight]—they actually mean ‘Heavan’—welcomed a big batch of CRPF personnel as its first audience in more than three decades, to watch a screening of a Hindi film brought in from Jallundhar. Until about one year ago, the same movie hall was […]
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The term ‘Eurasian’ was coined sometime in the nineteenth century to originally mean any citizen living in India whose parentage was of British father and an Indian mother. The people to whom it applied weren’t quite pleased with it, so they changed it to ‘Anglo Indian’. In the century that followed, non-domiciled Britishers such as […]
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Few would know that once upon a time Lucknow also featured on the map of India as a centre of film production. Cinema came to Lucknow via Calcutta. The railway line of the East India Railways (EIR) traversed from Howrah, to Allahabad, to Agra and ended at Ambala. On this route there was much traffic […]
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