Preserving Butterflies
Remembering P.K. Nair, the Legendary Film Archivist
Kabhi Door Kabhi Paas: Mrinal Sen’s Short Films
On following Mrinal Sen’s filmography, one notices a change around the 80s. From sharp socio-political commentaries to self-introspection, there is a gradual shift from looking outward to looking inward. With his earlier films, he earns for himself the title of being a ‘political filmmaker’, while his later films situate themselves within the spaces of the […]
On ‘Shauq’ and Songs that Undo Us
By Anandi Mishra (Cover image: Dust storms in Delhi, Raghu Rai, circa 1986) Ki aankhon mein teriRaat ki nadiYeh baazi toh haari haiSau feesadi Lately, all of us mortal beings (at least the Hindi film buffs) have succumbed to the cascading waves of melancholia that Amit Trivedi’s latest, and so far his best, Hindi music […]
The Mad Heart’s Parable
Reading Agha Shahid Ali’s ‘The Country Without a Post Office’
‘Films I Think of When I Think of Music’: Shweta Basu Prasad Picks Favourites
Films on music, films with good music, films that come to our minds when we think of music – actor Shweta Basu Prasad, who is also an Indian classical music enthusiast, picks ten of her favourites from Indian cinema that fit the above description (and beyond). As we begin a new year, may this list […]
My Moonwashed Horizons: Moheen and I
Guest Author: Debmalya Bandyopadhyay The first month of college was lonely. Fresh out of school, I was suddenly in a place filled with strangers and had no one to really talk to. As I tried to leave my shell to make friends, I somehow got invited to ‘Music and Lyrics,’ a collaborative event by the […]
Burning Chest and Stormy Eyes: Alienation on Arrival in Gaman
By Sumit Ray One of the most soul-stirring songs to come out of Indian cinema is from a relatively under-regarded film called Gaman (1978, Dir: Muzaffar Ali). In the film, Farooq Sheikh’s character is an urban migrant who has moved to the city of Bombay (as it was called back then) to find work after […]
Ankahi: A Sonorous Proclamation of Wordless Love
By Rohit Saha Though short films, through their apparent structural constraints, appear to be a tricky territory to navigate, filmmakers have time and again found it a very liberating format to tell stories about love. As Tagore said about story stories, ‘Sesh hoyeo hoilo na sesh’ (it ends, but doesn’t seem to have ended), scriptwriters […]
The Genesis of Indo-Funk: The Music of Ananda Shankar
By Puja Nandi Perhaps sometimes dwarfed by the meteoric fame of his uncle Ravi Shankar, Ananda Shankar, unarguably among the pioneers of the Indo-Funk genre of music, is not talked about as often as he should be. His unique style was the uninhibited blending of the East and the West; guitars melded with the sounds […]
The Multifarious Mansions of Mrinal Sen
By Sumit Ray “Night grinds on and the huge decrepit mansion continues talking in unceasing whispers…” Ek Din Pratidin (1980) “From Baishey Shravan in 1960 … ‘ruins’ have played an important role in many of my films.” Always Being Born All of us have, at some time or another, imbued the houses we have lived […]
