Indian CInema
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GAMAK GHAR (Dir. Achal Mishra, 2019, India)
Director Achal Mishra’s impressive debut film is a semi-formalist work, resorting to a succession of absorbing vignettes and framed as tableau in which the historical spatial and temporal configurations of an ancestral family house acts as more than just a pivot, fashioning a sense of the ephemeral and conjuring a steady yet absorbing rhythm. Choosing Continue reading
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AAKROSH / Cry of the Wounded [Dir. Govind Nihalani, 1980, India] – ‘I burn from within…’
In the dialogue-less opening to Aakrosh, Bhiku (Om Puri), the Adivasi labourer looks on in chains as the body of his dead wife (Smita Patil in a cameo) is cremated before he is led away by the police to jail. The pot marked face, protruding eyes, leathery skin of Bhiku amount to an image of Continue reading
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THE SEVENTH WALK (Dir. Amit Dutta, 2013, India) – Modulations of Light & Space
In Amit Dutta’s The Seventh Walk (2013) the camera meanders, weaves and glides through a forest, replicating and distorting the gaze of New Delhi based Indian artist, Paramjit Singh. The dolly shots, evocatively staged, depict the spaces of the forest as oneiric and mysterious. There is sensuality at work in Dutta’s ghostly imagining of the forest, Continue reading
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Genre, Iconography & Ideology: Imaginings of the Train in Indian Cinema – Introduction
Introduction ‘Come children, let’s play a game, Someone comes and someone goes, This is a game of this world, Bell rings at every station, Signal will be given and the flag will wave, Then the train starts moving, Chuk chuk chuk chuk goes the train!’ — Train Song from 27 Down (1974) A cursory glance Continue reading
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ESTHEPPAN (Dir. Govindan Aravindan, 1979, India)
Aravindan’s 1979 feature film Estheppan (Stephen) is a companion piece to Kummatty, also released in 1979. Estheppan, a mythical entity conjured by a Christian fishing village in Kerala, materialises magically in the contested narratives of the village folk. It is the restful Keralan coastline Aravindan turns to as a natural landscape from which Estheppan emerges. Continue reading
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