Cinema has the ability to transform subject into object and object into energy, so that desire can be withdrawn. Desire and resultant pleasure must wait through delay, or so states the cinema. Prantik Basu’s Bela uses this relationship to desire through the location-space i.e., the village of Bela, which literally means “time.” Basu’s approach is to transform time […]
Learn More
Utpal Datta converses with Supratim Bhol, the cinematographer of Avijatrik, lit., the wanderlust of Apu, purportedly the concluding part of Satyajit Ray’s Apu trilogy based on the remaining portions of the novel Aparajito by Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay. A film is a sort of a dream, a combination of imaginary images in the mind of the […]
Learn More
It has been almost half a century since Meena Kumari (1933- 1972) passed away, and yet her evocative silver screen images come back again and again to stir our emotions. In death, as in life, she remains the creator of many stories, exactly resembling Princess Scheherazade of the Arabian Nights. The Arabian Princess wove endless […]
Learn More
Why do you need a film critic? Christian Metz, the French scholar once so famously opined “A film is difficult to explain because it is easy to understand.” Metz was trying to draw Freud and Lacan into cinema and its aesthetics. No doubt, he required to formulate theories to save his money. And like all […]
Learn More
Film festivalas — a platform for gender parity Discriminated, underrepresented, misrepresented with that proverbial male gaze syndrome on screen, and subjugated and suppressed to the point of stoic silence off screen, women in the film industry have had to face a Sisyphean struggle to come into their own and wrest their due from an otherwise […]
Learn More
Pioneering Scottish documentary filmmaker John Grierson’s principles of documentary were that cinema’s potential for observing life could be exploited in a new art form; that the original actor and original scene are better guides than their fiction counterparts for interpreting the modern world; and that materials “thus taken from the raw” can be more real […]
Learn More
Ever since the Venice International Film Festival, the oldest in the world, blew the bugle in late 2020, announcing with much bravado that it would be held on time, cineastes all over the world have breathed a ray of hope. Roberto Cicutto, President of La Biennale di Venezia, said on the eve of the festival, […]
Learn More
The Great Indian Kitchen “Woman is shut up in a kitchen or in a boudoir, and astonishment is expressed that her horizon is limited. Her wings are clipped, and it is found deplorable that she cannot fly.” -Simone de Beauvoir A mere semblance of defiance suffices for a young bride in India to be slandered […]
Learn More
Kaifi Azmi — the Poet of Love, Revolution and Regeneration Aaj ki raat bahut garm hava chalti hai Aaj ki raat na footpath pe niind aa.egi Sab uTho, main bhi uThun tum bhi uTho, tum bhi uTho Koi khiDki isi divar men khul ja.egi (A sultry wind blows tonight, Sleep won’t visit the footpath […]
Learn More
Saeed Jaffrey — the Transcultural Beacon “I cannot rest from travel: I will drink Life to the lees: All times I have enjoy’d Greatly, have suffer’d greatly, both with those That loved me, and alone, on shore, and when Thro’ scudding drifts the rainy Hyades Vext the dim sea.” -Alfred Tennyson, ‘Ulysses’ Literally in […]
Learn More