Hindi

Sethji is a widowed, a businessman and lives a comfortable life with his only daughter, Hansa, his son-in-law, Rahul, and a grandson, Munna. He has Rahul as his right-hand man, and a nephew named Dinesh who also assists in running the business. Petty rivalries and jealousies have grown in the family, and Sethji and Rahul feel that Dinesh is now trying to undermine the business. They would like to get rid of him, without attracting any attention to themselves. They do terminate Dinesh, but this affects Sethji’s health, and he dies. Shortly thereafter, Hansa also dies, leaving Rahul to look after the business on his own. But there are many questions unanswered, like why was no one in attendance with the ailing Sethji; Hansa’s death was a suicide, why was it covered up?; what of the affair that Rahul is having with Janki, their maidservant, who is full of venom against the family; and the involvement of Anita, Rahul’s secretary, in his personal life. With the police getting involved, it is time for them to either come clean or go their separate ways.Read More »

IMDB:
Three brothers are separated after their parents’ murder. Years later, their only hope of avenging their parents and reuniting as a family lies in the song they learned as children.Read More »

Synopsis
Soni, a young policewoman in Delhi, and her superintendent, Kalpana, have collectively taken on a growing crisis of violent crimes against women. However, their alliance suffers a major setback when Soni is transferred out for alleged misconduct on duty.Read More »

A marvellous documentary, one of the best Indian films of the last decade and the director’s greatest work. Banned by the national censor.

Documentary filmmaker Anand Patwardhan’s controversial War and Peace (2001) could well have been titled War and Peace: Or How I Learned to Forget Gandhi and Worship the Bomb, for the major theme that runs through the film is the disjunction that exists between the past and the present and a nation’s collective (and selective) cultural amnesia with respect to their own past. Shot in four countries – India, Pakistan, Japan and the USA – and over a period of four years following the 5 nuclear tests done by India in 1998, Patwardhan’s film was slammed by Pakistan for being anti-Pakistani and by India for being anti-Indian, while the film’s barrel was pointed elsewhere.Read More »

Quote:
A short excerpt from the booklet essay by Mark Cousins.

India’s is partially an oral culture, many of the great stories are preserved in people’s memories, but Celluloid Man shows that, in the movie world, Nair wanted to change that. He wanted to make a physical memory bank, a depository of film prints, a place you had to cool and dust. It’s the physicality of his story that is striking: the long taxi rides to the relatives of Phalke, the country’s first feature director, to see if they have any rolls of film in their home; the bang on the door at 3am because a filmmaker must see Pasolini’s The Gospel According to Matthew there and then; the stripping of miles of 35mm negatives to harvest their silver to make jewellery. It’s a pre-digital epic.Read More »

Quote:
Kaul’s film addresses the writings of Gajanan Madhav Muktibodh (1917-79), one of the main representatives of the Nai Kavita (New Poetry) movement in Hindi. Muktibodh also wrote several short stories, one of which provides the film with its title, and critical essays. The film integrates episodes from Muktibodh’s writings with material from other source, including a reinvented neo-realism derived from Muktibodh’s literary settings. The narrative is constructed around 3 characters. Ramesh (Gopi) iis one who speaks and enacts Muktibodh’s writings, functioning as the first-person voice of the text; his two friends, , Madhav (Jha) and Keshav (Raina), are Ramesh’s antagonists and interlocuters esp. in the debates about modernity. Kaul gradually minimizes the fictional settings until, in the remarkably shot sequences of the factory, the audience is directly confronted with the written text itself.Read More »

Synopsis:
Shekhar Dayal has moved into a new neighborhood, and is just not pleased with the new surroundings. He resents the noise children make while playing, as he prefers quiet and solitude. His reclusion is shattered when his neighbor, Mili, comes into his life. At first he hates the intrusion, but then grows to be fond, and then ultimately fall in love with her. When the time comes for him to propose to this sunny, cheerful, and positive young lady, he is told that she has only a few more months to live.Read More »

Synopsis:
A story set in the modern upper-middle class of India, where telecommunications and a western lifestyle mix with old traditions, like the arranged wedding young Aditi accepts when she ends the affair with a married TV producer. The groom is an Indian living in Texas, and all relatives from both families, some from distant places like Australia, come to New Delhi during the monsoon season to attend the wedding. The four-day arrangements and celebrations will see clumsy organization, family parties and drama, dangers to the happy end of the wedding, lots of music and even a new romance for the wedding planner Dubey with the housemaid Alice…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 »