Indian Cinema
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INDIAN CINEMA – the best of 2014
Each year lists and polls that are representative of critics and reviewers over the last 12 months are supposed to give us an idea about which films stood out, mattered or will be remembered in the future. Of course all of this premature canonisation happens largely at the expense of films which don’t fall into Continue reading
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PLACEBO (Dir. Abhay Kumar, 2014, India)
Abhay Kumar’s feature length directorial debut Placebo, a fiercely inventive documentary, had its world premiere last month at the IDFA in Amsterdam. What makes the project especially significant from a funding point of view is the director raised much of the financing through ‘crowd funding’. A trailer released in February 2013 helped to attract attention Continue reading
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NAGARIK / THE CITIZEN (Dir. Ritwik Ghatak, 1952, India) ‘Film-making is not an esoteric thing to me…’
The film is about an unemployed youth named Ramu, who comes from a middle-class family that has been turned refugee overnight by the Partition, but which nevertheless refuses to abandon its petty- bourgeois aspirations. Ramu gets saddled with the responsibilities of running the household, tending to his aged parents, getting his younger brother an education, Continue reading
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PRABHAT PHERI / JOURNEY WITH PRABHAT (Dir. Jessica Sadana, Samarth Dixit, India, 2014)
Rajadhyaksha & Willemen’s entry for the Prabhat Film Company says the following: ‘It had the largest stage floor in India and an art department under Fattelal regarded as the country’s finest. Like New Theatres, Prabhat had many stars on the payroll, well equipped sound and editing departments and its own laboratory…Prabhat pioneered new popular forms Continue reading
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QISSA: The Tale of a Lonely Ghost (Dir. Anup Singh, 2014, India) [Spoilers]
The title of the film comes from the arabic word ‘Qissa’ which means folk tale. The Punjabi Qissa has a strong oral tradition and families from the Punjab can recite Qisse or tales that are both specific to genre and a family history. Anup Singh draws widely on such a cultural tradition, narrating a tragic Continue reading
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