I wrote my first film review in 1968 in the leftist political weekly Century (founded by VK Krishna Menon) while I was in college. Since then I have reviewed films on and off in various newspapers and magazines. In spite of spending over 5 decades in films and other media I am still hesitant to […]
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The selfie has become an integral part of living today but it can be regarded as a development of the amateur family photograph brought up to date by new technology. Still, alongside technological advances are social changes and a selfie means something quite different from what family pictures once meant. Technological advances replace and/or supplement […]
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Cinema screening was revived last week in Anantnag when a local theatre —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 the shelter […]
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Tumbbad is certainly an unusual film, an atmospheric fantasy thriller that makes one sit up and take notice although most of its success is in its art department. It has been described as ‘horror’ but is perhaps closer to a fairy tale for adults, revolving around invented myths. There have been other films from the […]
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The subject of my deliberation may sound unfamiliar to you: ‘New wave’ in cinemas of Northeast India. Can you imagine that in a region that suffers from underdevelopment, infrastructural handicaps, there could be such a ‘new wave’? First let me explain the peculiarity of cinema produced in this region. The north-eastern part of India has […]
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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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One man, but so many lives! And each life impacted so many personalities… One thought that created history. So many thoughts that continue to impact histories of so many lands… Perhaps that is why any mention of Gandhi makes us think – first and foremost – of Richard Attenborough’s definitive biopic. This 1982 epic on […]
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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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Among the various characteristics of Hindi popular cinema noted by film scholars and theorists, one that is of importance is that it is indifferent to the attractions of suspense and surprise and that it favours the familiar rather than novelty. How things will happen is more important than what will happen (1), which will be […]
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The cinematograph provides us with a view of the world that is not a representation of the world outside, but is instead a space-time continuum representing an interiority that captures the internal state of the audience. This continuum is in the form of a sound-image block that provides us with a new understanding of reality. […]
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