Quote:
In Satyajit Ray’s absorbing contemporary adaptation of a play by Henrik Ibsen, a good-hearted doctor discovers that the serious illness befalling the citizens of his small Bengali town may be due to a contamination of the holy water at the local temple. His findings are met not with public gratitude but with rancor, as well as opposition from local authorities, who are afraid the news will keep visitors away. Stately in style but with a fiery debate at its heart, An Enemy of the People gets at the tension between religion and science in everyday Indian life.

1.53GB | 1h 39m | 720×540 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/5CB5D298138E389/Satyajit_Ray_-_(1990)_An_Enemy_of_the_People.mkv

Language:Bengali
Subtitles:English

The post Satyajit Ray – Ganashatru AKA An Enemy of the People (1989) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Siddhartha Chowdhury, a brilliant medical student, is forced to leave his studies after his father’s sudden demise. He is forced to navigate the high unemployment rate and the communist socio-political climate of 1960s Calcutta in search of a job.

1.57GB | 1h 49m | 704×528 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/4406B9A4C9CAA80/Pratidwandi.AKA.The.Adversary.1970.DVD.AC3.2.0.x264-SaL.mkv

Language:Bengali
Subtitles:English

The post Satyajit Ray – Pratidwandi aka The Adversary (1970) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Does India have a national cinema? Does it, indeed, require one? Mrinal Sen is not quite sure. Yet, his latest celluloid essay, And the Show Goes On, a British Film Institute-funded tribute to the world’s largest movie industry in cinema’s centenary year, is quite polemically categorical about what India’s filmic output should be.

But can it ever be what it ideally ought to be? Again, Sen, as is his wont, is not forth coming with a clear answer. His prescription, however, is rather unambiguous: cinema should confront social realities, no matter how harsh; it cannot continue being as cavalierly escapist as it is in India and yet expect to be taken seriously on the global stage. As film director and critic Chidananda Dasgupta says on camera: “India lives too much by myth and too little by fact”. That, for Sen, is where the problem begins. And ends.

And the Show Goes On, premiered at the recent Venice Film Festival, is a constantly provocative, always lively, if a bit elliptical, evaluation of the first 100 years of Indian cinema. It touches upon practically everything that is of import from Raja Harishchandra to Hum Aapke Hain Koun: Mughal-e-Azam, Devaki Bose, V. Shantaram, Raj Kapoor, Bimal Roy, Guru Dutt, Satyajit Ray and the rest of the new wave flag bearers, besides much else. But the assessment of each film that finds a mention in this hour-long documentary is coloured unmistakably by Sen’s personal perceptions. And for that alone, And the Show Goes On is a film worth preserving.

But there’s much else here. For instance, there’s Mrinal Sen himself grilling Mani Ratnam, allowing him graciously to have his say about his brand of seemingly socially-conscious cinema—”I am not ready yet to see absolute reality”—and then cutting away to a sequence from Govind Nihalani’s well-received Tamas which has Om Puri fleeing in horror from a sight he cannot obviously stomach—the carcass of a pig in front of a place of worship. Are we, asks the film as it fades out, condemned to flee from reality like the character in Tamas? The answer has eluded us for eight decades, yet the show must go on. As must the search for the right idiom. The right balance between dream and reality.

648MB | 54m 15s | 768×576 | avi

https://nitro.download/view/2359C450AEE99E5/And_the_Show_Goes_On_-_Indian_Chapter_(Mrinal_Sen,_1995).avi

Language(s):English and Hindi (in some film clips)
Subtitles:English hard subs for Hindi film clips

The post Mrinal Sen – And the Show Goes On – Indian Chapter [BFI Century of Cinema: India] (1995) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

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.

2.16GB | 2h 4m | 768×576 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/3AE3DCE715707C9/Akaler.Sandhane.AKA.In.Search.of.Famine.1980.WEB-DL.AAC.2.0.x264-traVis.mkv

Language(s):Bengali
Subtitles:English (Hardcoded)

The post Mrinal Sen – Akaler Sandhane AKA In Search of Famine (1980) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Synopsis
A political activist escapes the prison van and is sheltered in a posh apartment owned by a sensitive young woman. Both are rebels: the activist against political treachery and the other on social level. Both are bitter about badly organized state of things. Being in solitary confinement, the fugitive engages himself in self-criticism and, in the process, questions the leadership. Questions are not allowed, obeying that is mandatory. Displeasure leads to bitterness, bitterness to total rift. The struggle has to continue, both for the political activist, now segregated, and the woman in exile.

1.37GB | 01:31:01 | 640×432 | avi

https://nitro.download/view/1817210074FFF39/Padatik.avi
https://nitro.download/view/4286DA29CFC41D6/Padatik.srt

Language(s):Bengali
Subtitles:English

The post Mrinal Sen – Padatik aka The Guerrilla Fighter (1973) first appeared on Cinema of the World.