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Tape 39: Memory as Document, Memory as Map Maker

Tape 39: Memory as Document, Memory as Map Maker

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...
Ideology matters: film criticism in new Malayalam cinema

Ideology matters: film criticism in new Malayalam cinema

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...
A 40-year-old Love Story

A 40-year-old Love Story

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...
Face to face — the cinema of Adoor Gopalakrishnan

Face to face — the cinema of Adoor Gopalakrishnan

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...
Sushant Singh Rajput — the tyranny of solitude

Sushant Singh Rajput — the tyranny of solitude

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...
Mukul Haloi’s Ghormua

Mukul Haloi’s Ghormua

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...
Book review — Chalachitrar Rashaswadan

Book review — Chalachitrar Rashaswadan

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...
Irrfan Khan—the journey towards an ‘actor’s film’

Irrfan Khan—the journey towards an ‘actor’s film’

‘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...
Rishi Kapoor —  Tujh mein kya hai deewane

Rishi Kapoor — Tujh mein kya hai deewane

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”,...
Nostalgia for the Future: Dwelling as Denotation

Nostalgia for the Future: Dwelling as Denotation

The primary proposition of Avijit Mukul Kishore and Rohan Shivkumar’s Nostalgia for the Future is dwelling (in the Heideggerean sense) as denotation. Contrarily the voice, Kishore’s voice, is the embodiment of this denotation. Over the course of the film this...