Omar Ahmed
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AGRA (Dir. Kanu Behl, 2023, India/France)
There is a lot of sex in Agra; in the toilet (masturbatory self-relief), on the phone (sexting), on the bed. It is raw, unfiltered sex, rarely depicted in Indian cinema with such indescribable candour. Guru, a young call centre employee lives in what can only be described as a kind of sexual desolation bordering on Continue reading
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Bollywood Flashback 1# – The cut-price vigilantism of SHAHENSHAH / King of Kings (Dir. Tinnu Anand, 1988, India)
Shahenshah thrives in the darkness, a nocturnal vigilante who stalks the crime infested city streets with a vicious outrage that is manifested through acts of cathartic violence. He is a cultural composite, an uncanny bricolage that absorbs and radiates a surfeit of cultural markers including DC’s The Punisher, Michael Jackson, RoboCop, and of course self Continue reading
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Mohan Joshi Hazir Ho! (Dir. Saeed Mirza, India, 1984) – ‘So, who says there is no happiness here?’
A cursory search of the term ‘chawl’ offers a definition of ‘low quality housing’, which can’t be any further from the truth regarding the abject state of housing for the lower and underclass in India. What chawl actually equates to is poor sanitation, overcrowding, cramped living conditions and squalor. Saeed Mirza’s 1984 work Mohan Joshi Continue reading
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STRAIGHT TIME (1978, Ulu Grosbard, US) – Mann before Mann
Michael Mann worked on the script for Straight Time (based on Eddie Bunker’s novel) before his departure from the project in the late 1970s. A year later Mann would go on to make Jericho Mile, and which would see him port over some of the original ideas from Straight Time expressly the thread of the Continue reading
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Rebellious Poets and Radical Spirits: Indian Parallel Cinema – Il Cinema Ritrovato
(20 – 27 July 2021, Bologna, Italy) The new strand on Indian Parallel Cinema that I have co-curated with Cecilia Cenciarelli and Shivendra Dungarpur showcases some of the best examples of the early years of Parallel Cinema, which we have titled ‘The Foundational Years’ (69 – 76). This eclectic strand with a strong regional slant Continue reading
Movie Mahal 