Parallel Cinema
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Swayamvaram / One’s Own Choice (Dir. Adoor Gopalakrishnan, 1972, Malayalam)
Adoor Gopalakrishnan’s debut feature Swayamvaram (1972) is a stark melodrama that marked the beginning of the Malayalam New Wave, an adjunct of India’s Parallel Cinema movement. The film opens with an extraordinary six-minute, dialogue-free sequence aboard a moving bus in Kerala. Shot in a verité style, the camera roves among passengers before settling on the protagonist, Viswam Continue reading
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GODAM / WAREHOUSE (Dir. Dilip Chitre, 1983, India)
* * * A NFDC production and accomplished Marathi poet Dilip Chitre’s only directorial feature film, Godam opens with a ritual, the sacrifice of an animal, auspiciously preceding the marriage of Yesu (Trupti), a teenage bride to a mentally challenged boy. The boy’s father, a perverted manifestation of the patriarchal system in which Yesu finds 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
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Chokh / The Eyes (Dir. Utpalendu Chakraborty, 1982, India/Bengali)
The eyes speak, harbouring and chronicling histories, emotional sentiments and even memories. Chokh, a stark political exercise in neorealist aesthetics, opens with the petrified eyes of Jadunath (Om Puri in blistering form) who looks directly at us with a totalizing gaze of defiance. Jadunath, a union leader, has been convicted of murder, and waits impatiently Continue reading
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BHUVAN SHOME (Dir. Mrinal Sen, 1969, India) – ‘Big Bad Bureaucrat Reformed by Rustic Belle’
I’ve only really started to look at Bhuvan Shome so here are some tentative thoughts about the film, which I hope to return to at a later date. Bhuvan Shome is often cited as having initiated the New Indian Cinema movement. Released in 1969, along with Sara Akash and Uski Roti, as a triptych, the films Continue reading
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