In 1979, Basu Chatterjee made Baaton Baaton Mein and unobtrusively brought to us the dating and courtship rituals of a community that was till then either caricatured or just overlooked in Hindi cinema. Nancy Perreira and Tony Braganza…
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Matriarchal manipulation in a patriarchal world is depicted unsparingly in Usha Priyamwada’s Pachpan Khambe Laal Deewarein (Now playing on Prasar Bharti). The mother resentful of her lecturer daughter’s comfortable life in her college residence because the younger daughters…
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“Start with hope..always start with hope. We went from being a shitty team to become one of the biggest dynasties in the sport and all it needed was one match to light this fire,” says Michael Jordan at…
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In 1947, my grandparents brought three children and the remains of an uprooted life from Pakistan to India in a train. One of those children was my mother. I grew up hearing a lot of stories about the…
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Three documentaries streaming right now show the ultimate culmination of the Bois Locker Room culture. And what happens when one gender is taught to mistrust its instincts of self-preservation and the other does not even learn something as…
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In Sudip Sharma’s Paatal Lok (Now streaming on Amazon. Co written by Sharma, Sagar Haveli, Hardik Mehta and Gunjit Chopra. Directed by Avinash Arun and Prosit Roy), India’s disowned inhabit the headlines we turn away from. A young…
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In the opening credits of MS Sathyu’s Garm Hava, you hear Kaifi Azmi’s lament, “Taksim hua mulk toh dil ho gaye tukde; Har seene mein toofan, wahan bhi tha yahan bhi Har ghar mein chita jalti thi, lahraate the sholay; har shahar mein shamshan, wahan bhi tha yahan bhi Gita ki koi na sunta, na koi Quran ki sunta; […]
For this reviewer, the biggest tragedy in Kill Dil was the criminal misuse of actor Murad Ali’s talent. The same guy who sparkled in Tigmanshu Dhulia’s 2003 hit Haasil with his UP slang and crackling one liners and then never found another role worthy of him. The same Murad Ali who is film-maker Muzaffar Ali’s son and director […]
“The point of theatre is to create a microcosm and connect it with a macrocosm so that a story means something to everyone.” Director, actor and theatre doyen Sunil Shanbag is holding forth in the Ranga Shankara cafe between rehearsals of Stories In a Song, the play that played to a full house on November 7. Over […]
Padma Shri awardee, filmmaker, cinematographer and one of the key figures of independent cinema in India, Govind Nihalani has just walked into Bangalore’s Ranga Shankara cafe and a young volunteer is asking him if she can get him coffee. He asks, ‘What kind?’ She smiles nervously,”Filter?” He looks relieved and nods. Yes, he would very […]
Forty one years after its theatrical release, Garm Hava, M S Sathyu’s seminal work on a country suffering the aftershocks of Partition will grace cinema screens again on November 14.PVR group’s limited release arm, Director’s Rare, will release the movie (digitally restored by Indikino Edutainment) in Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru, Chennai, Pune and Ahmedabad. Those who […]
There is a moment in Mahesh Bhatt’s 1991 film Sadak when Sadashiv Amrapurkar’s Maharani, an eunuch who is also a brothel madam, is hunting for prey or rather two women who have escaped with their lovers from her clutches. In a parking lot where the silence is thrumming with fear and foreboding, Maharani is literally […]
Beyond the obvious connotations of the politics of revolution, the name Lenin In Irish means, ‘lover.’ And the young man surrounded by many bamboo installations at the Shanthiroad Studio Gallery, calls himself Lenin for a very good reason. He loves the earth, the cycle of birth and decay and rejuvenation. He loves how nature’s palette changes with […]
In October this year, the James Bond franchise turned 52. From an inside joke to a gut-wrenching life and death question, the Bond narratives have travelled a long way. The franchise has now acquired a sense of immediacy and finally a Bond film has grown up to tell stories about real people in unreal situations, […]
She calls herself Poornima Travelling Sukumar and for good reason. She is currently travelling with a cargo of goodwill to Kashmir in a lorry. This art caravan she says is called Winter on Wheels and is gathering warm clothing for the Kashmiris affected by the recent floods. At every stop, she and her co-traveller Akram Feroz also make […]
A female actor with a successful career, occasionally contemplating death to escape her empty life and a futile relationship. A young, upcoming star who carries her away to safety from a set engulfed in cathartic fire. And the beginning of endless love. That is how Nargis and Sunil Dutt’s story began along with an unbroken chain […]
Trust Punjabi theatre legend, Sangeet Natak Akademi Award winner and Padma Shri awardee Neelam Mansingh Chowdhry to treat the world as her stage. And to make personal connections with literary texts from diverse sources. In 2007, she had brought to the Theatre Festival, a searing Punjabi adaptation of South African writer Can Themba’s The Suit, a three […]
Dharani Kala Prakash was studying international business in the US when life brought her back to her hometown Bangalore in 1993. “I came back to give birth to my son and to start my life anew as a single mother,” she reminisces. Then unfurled the urge to create a life that would not require her […]