Synopsis
Through the microcosmic perspectivising of a group of devoted and uncompromising IPTA workers, Ghatak with his signature style touches on varied issues of partition, idealism, corruption, the interdependence of art and life, the scope of art, and class-struggle.Read More »
Synopsis
A painter’s journey into the source of his inspiration in the landscape surrounding him and within him.
Notes:
Shot on super-16mm film, this is an abstract exploration of the creative process. Starting with ‘Nainsukh’, his 2010 film on the eponymous 17th century master-painter, Amit Dutta started making a series of films located in the Kangra Valley of the Lower Western Himalayas. This film approaches another shade of the same landscape through the modernist paintings of Paramjit Singh, whose mud home-studio in the hills sets the stage in the film.
The film’s musical score is notable for Amit Dutta’s collaboration with Rudra Veena maestro Bahauddin Dagar.Read More »
Synopsis
A movie about making a movie. A young, idealistic director arrives in a village to make a picture set during the Great Bengal Famine. It’s a film that he hopes will reveal the problems and privations still current in rural India.
Awards:
National Award 1981 – Golden Lotus (Best Film)
Berlin Film Festival 1981 – Silver Bear.Read More »
This much-discussed film was Kapoor’s first to feature his trademark Chaplinesque character “Raj/Raju” (“little Raj,” though the homage to Chaplin is less pronounced than in the sunnier SHRI 420), here a hapless “vagabond” (avaaraa) who, as the film opens, is on trial for the attempted murder of a pillar of society, Judge Raghunath (brilliantly played by Prithviraj Kapoor, R. K.’s real-life father). He is defended by a beautiful young lawyer, Rita (Nargis), an orphan who also happens to be the Judge’s ward. Read More »
Synopsis
A tree is felled in the neighborhood and a worm finds its way to a new home.
MUBI’s Take:- A tree is felled in the neighborhood and a worm finds its way to a new home.Read More »
After the sudden death of her dad, Sameer, and mom, Preeti, Sahila goes to live with her grandmother and cousin in Bombay. Years later, now fully matured, she returns home to Chandanagar to live with her uncle, Mahendra Pratap, and cousin, Jasmin. This is where she will be exposed to a resurrected evil witch, Nikita, who has manifested herself in the body of Jasmin. Aided by a priest named Baba, she is determined to kill each and everyone of the remainder of the Pratap family members. And there is no known power on Earth that can stop Nikita.Read More »
Synopsis:
Lizzie (Felicity Kendal) is an actress in a Shakespearean theater troupe that has seen better days. The troupe tours India to dwindling crowds who are less interested in all things British in the wake of Indian independence. When she has an affair with the Indian playboy Sanju (Shashi Kapoor), Lizzie feels the wrath of her disapproving father Tony (Geoffrey Kendal) and her mother Carla (Laura Liddell). Madhur Jaffrey plays the role of the Indian actress Manjula in this romantic drama with musical score from Satyajit RayRead More »
Synopsis:
Michelle McNally is “special” in more ways than one. She cannot see – nor hear nor speak – She inhabits a world of infinite black – of a seamless, endless void where nothing reaches her and she reaches nothing. Her world is frightening in its complete remoteness. On the sheer will of her ferocious rage against destiny, Michelle struggles to stay afloat in the impenetrable whirlpool her life has become. into this devastating isolation enters a battle weary teacher, Debraj Sahai, life’s wounded but arrogantly insolent warrior. Read More »
Amir Dutta’s latest film, Wittgenstein Plays Chess With Marcel Duchamp, Or How Not To Do Philosophy, is a 17-minute animation that adapts an essay of the same name by Steven B. Gerrard. The essay examines how Wittgenstein and Duchamp, both keen chess players, used the game to question language and perception. The film has a winking style of animation—by the director’s wife, Ayswarya S. Dutta—that involves the juxtaposition of cutout figures, objects and backgrounds. It’s a sprightly investigation into the nature of surface appearances and how we perceive meaning, packed with allusions to art, linguistics, philosophy and chess.Read More »