India

Synopsis
Suggestions of ancient and modern myths and folklore coalesce in dreams to bring alive a colourful animated world.Read More »

Chidambaram (Malayalam) is a 1985 Malayalam film written, directed and produced by G. Aravindan. It is the film adaptation of a short story by C. V. Sreeraman.The film explores various aspects of relations between men and women through the lives of three people living in a cattle farm. Themes of guilt and redemption are also dealt with. Bharath Gopi, Smita Patil, Sreenivasan and Mohan Das play the lead roles. It won the National Film Award for Best Feature Film and five Kerala State Film Awards including Best Film and Best Direction.Read More »

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“Aparajito” is the second film of Satyajit Ray’s ‘Apu Trilogy’ (Pather Panchali, Aparajito and Apur Sansar) continues to document the life and maturation of one young Indian boy. The film opens with Apu, son of Harihar and Sarbajaya, wandering and exploring the Temple City of Bananas on the banks of the Ganga (Ganges river) where they reside. The story focuses on Apu leaving the embrace of his family nest to work and become educated in a more modern world than what he has become accustomed in his youth. The struggle to remain separate is exemplified by the dire need of his Mother, Sarbajaya who is deathly ill and depressed. She remains desperately lonely in her small village after the death of her husband and departure of her son. Continuing the cycle of life Satyajit Ray continues to explore the inner conflicts of conforming to a more contemporary world than our parents. The strength to overcome our bonding of birth is another universal theme of traditional respect and independent personal advancement.Read More »

Plot: Kalu is a taxi-driver in Bombay, India. He has two women who love him and would like to marry him. Kalu first wants to establish himself, and become rich, before he can even think of marriage. One of the women who loves him, has a father who is involved in gangster-type activities, and would like Kalu also to join him so that he can get rich soon. Kalu has now to decide to become rich quick or sleep better.Read More »

When Krishnan, a poor Indian laborer, is caught stealing a landowner’s coconuts to feed his family, he becomes a poster boy for various political parties all jockeying for position in local elections. When the party in power frames him for an unsolved murder in order to gain support, Krishnan faces the death penalty. Enter the “throne of death,” the electric chair. The film’s satire intensifies as the rival Communist party takes up Krishnan’s cause, not to win his freedom, but to secure for Krishnan the noble privilege of being the first to experience the glorious, peaceful death afforded by the new American invention.Read More »

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This is the film that left the strongest impression on me. I have been lucky to engage it 3 times on 35mm.

Mani Kaul’s films create a sensory construct around their use of a selection of sounds to create a specific sensorial effect and images to create volume instead of (as in Hollywood) their denotative element of space. His films usually attempt to create an aesthetic where language is used beyond its denotative aspect, into its suggestive and rhythmic tonalities based on Anandvardhan’s 4th century text Dhwanyaloka about haiku like poetry forms and the aesthetic of suggestion they create known as ‘Dhwani’ which means ‘suggestive sound.’Read More »

The narrative pivots around the relationship of two sisters, older sister Anjali (Shabana
Azmi) is a successful professor with a powerful personality. She is the anchoring rock for
her family and carer for her sister Meethi whose progression into schizophrenia has been
speeded up by traumatic experiences. Anjali has always dominated the life of her attractive
younger sister, and jealously warded off Meethi’s handsome fiancé Jojo (Rahul Bose) with
fear of Meethi’s impending illness. Years later when Meethi and Anjali are on holiday in the
Hills there is a chance meeting with Jojo, now with his new wife and children. He is
shocked to discover that Meethi does not now recognize him, but lives in a world visited by
an imaginary husband and children of her own.Read More »

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In a poetic hour and a half, director Mani Kaul looks at the ancient art of making pottery from a wide variety of perspectives. Pots are shown in many settings, including a museum where a young child is mesmerized by the ceramics that ancient ancestors created from clay. The tradition continues and so does its magic, as potters are shown deftly working a lump of wet clay and fashioning it moment by moment into a slowly emerging shape. Kaul blends in myth and fables as well as the beauty of the art itself to create an inspiring look at a humble, everyday object.Read More »

Summary from The Hindu:
On paper, Siddheshwari, like so many films commissioned by the Films Division, is a cine-profile, of the Hindustani singer Siddheshwari Devi. However, Kaul turns the genre inside out, and amalgamates literary, theatrical, musical and cinematic forms together to construct an experience of music, instead of simply presenting biographical details or passively documenting the singer’s artistry. The sprawling film blends multiple timelines, realities and geographies to sketch a unique portrait of the artist.Read More »