The Mountains and the Mist
Every time I’m asked to name my favourite Satyajit Ray film, I do not know how to respond. Earlier, I used to stare stupidly for a while and then blurt out a name which, for no apparent reason, came first to my mind. Once you decide on a favourite, it is thereon easy to explain […]
Cinema for Change: Shyam Benegal’s Rural Trilogy
‘Through my films I can say, “Here is the world, and here are the possibilities we have,”’ – perhaps it is the existence of these possibilities that made Shyam Benegal the bearer of the winds of change in Indian cinema. There were filmmakers before him working independent of mainstream cinema, experimenting with different styles of […]
On Mothers and Daughters
Exploration of this powerful relationship through two films by Rituparno Ghosh
Absence
A young woman doesn’t return home for a night. A retired professor casually leaves his home one evening but never returns. The young servant boy of a middle-class Kolkata household is found dead one morning. Delay, disappearance, death – three films made over almost a decade, but connected through their central idea, form Mrinal Sen’s […]
The Music of Ritwik Ghatak
“Why do you always sing sad songs?” Ishwar asks his sister Sita in Subarnarekha. “It is almost as if there is nothing in this world beyond pain and suffering.” When art stems from lived experiences, it must be truthful. And truth is seldom under the compulsion to have a happy ending. Cinema, for Ritwik Ghatak, […]
The Other Lens
An account of some of the most prominent photographer characters in Indian cinema
To Love the Ordinary
Remembering the world of Basu Chatterjee that celebrated the richness of simple living
My Tagore: A Lesson on Endurance
How the poet still gives us the strength to live life
