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How Shyam Benegal has managed to handle such a vast and loosely scattered subject and presented such a fine piece of cinema? How he has managed to present so many differently looking and behaving characters in a single film? How he has managed to give so different physical gestures and psychological understandings to different characters?

As its known he was born in Hyderabad then how he managed to take that kind of performance from Ila Arun, which could be completely alien for a non-hindi speaking person? Vijay Tendulkar was not present in his team, Pt Satyadev Dube was not writing dialogues for this film and still he has managed so well in characterization department. From where comes, his deep and vast understanding about the people?

Socio-political commentary has been an integral part of almost all the films of Shyam Benegal since the time of Ankur. His films could have some …

[random thoughts, totally opinionated rants]

Well lets start with a brief story. Sunday afternoons were a pain for me for the first 12 years of my life. Of all the days, I hated this one the most. Not because it was the one day without school (I hated school too) but the incessant lecturing I used to receive from my uncle on every socio-political issue at that time. He made me read every article in the news that week; scribble down points and made me understand the various aspects. To make it more interesting, or so he thought he used to conjure up fables and stories with moralistic twists at the end. Needless to say I hated it, it was torture. I hated lecturing all my life, hated stories with morals in it, hated those old doordarshan film which we used to watch in our old battered black and white television. …

iView Author: Vishesh Mankal (New Delhi, India)

Email: Vishesh_Mankal [at] hotmail [dot] com

The Shells of Pride

Even though cinema is a very young art form compared to its predecessors it has already been subject to many controversies and theories. Over the years, films have been divided into many camps but the most enduring battle has been fought between the “Artistic” and the “Commercial” camps. Due to a lack of art films in India, this battle is instead fought by “Realistic” films. These films can be traced as far back as Robert Flaherty’s “Nanook of the North”, but to not give Grierson the credit he deserves for coining and defining the term documentary would be a crime, as his thoughts have had a major impact on the way fictional stories are told today. Filmmakers like Rossellini and De …

It will not be suffice to say that Amrish Puri plays only a callous father of Anant Velankar (Om Puri) in the film, Ardha Satya or the film shows him as a cruel father only. It will not do a proper justice to this interesting character. Things are not so simple and straight with this character that we may define his character as a harsh father of AV. Its not possible for Vijay Tendulkar to write a simple character that has been given only one characteristic. His characters have to be completely complex in nature because they belong to real life. His characters are seen in real life. Its not possible for Govind Nihalani to show his characters seized under monotonous behaviour and his characters have to face the volatile conditions and behaviour because life is like that only and prototypes don�t work here. That�s the beauty of films directed …

Final part of the interview of Director Prakash Jha(PJ), taken by Ajay Brahmatmaj (AB), is presented here.

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[Following is the translation of the Hindi Interview and may not do full justice to the original interview so to read the exact sayings of Prakash Jha, one should go through the original interview. This is simply a trial to expose the interview to those readers who can not read Hindi at all]
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AB: Which kind of influences you were having while making Daamul?

PJ: Impact of realistic cinema was certainly there. My own thinking and understanding was also developing continuously. I developed my own craft in direction and I conceived and further developed characters according to the necessity of that particular theme. Honestly speaking Daamul was the first film which followed my own liking and had my own style and touch. These four …

iView Author:Krishna
(Hyderabad, India )

Email:moviecentric [at] gmail [dot] com

Online Critics Society

The thought having an Online Critics Society came into my mind by looking at the present situation of the Indian Cinema.

Many people might be under the delusion that Indian Cinema has a good reputation outside India,sorry to say that the present Indian Cinema does not have that reputation.

When i was talking to my friend about the Indian Cinema who lives in US i came to know the downfall of standards of Indian Cinema.

Indian had produced some wonderful film makers like Satyajit Ray, Bimal Roy,Shaym Benegal,Guru Dutt,K.vishwanath etc… but do we have any hope of finding film makers mentioned above in the futre? answer is very simple and straight –NO

There are many reasons for this condition of Indian Cinema and one of the reasons is the awards.I feel …

Orson Welles, Jean Renoir, Ingmar Bergman, Alfred Hitchcock, Akira Kurosawa, David Lean, Andrei Tarkovsky, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Bernardo Bertolucci, Frank Capra, Francis Ford Coppola, Jean-Luc Godard, Fellini, Kubrick, Michelangelo Antonioni, Roman Polanski, Sydney Pollack, Steven Soderbergh, James Ivory etc etc
and
PC Barua, Sohrab Modi, Mehboob, Kedar Sharma, Bimol Roy, K. Asif, Raj Kapoor, Guru Dutt, Satyajit Ray, Ritwik Ghatak, Mrinal Sen, Mani Ratnam, Gulzar, Shyam Benegal, Govind Nihalani, Mani Kaul, Basu Chaterjee, Hrishikesh Mukharjee, Chetan Anand, BR Chopra, Yash Chopra, Vijay Anand, Ramesh Sippy, Shekhar Kapur etc etc are the names which have been taking us on the visual tours to show us their chosen stories and we have been enjoying these virtual rides sitting under mesmerisation of the over all phenomenon of the cinema. We have laughed and cried by seeing their films. Rather we have been re-living again and again all 9 rasas by watching …

Great and powerful and impressive writers possess one thing for sure and that is the art to present some stories in their own words/ways/manners and though its very much possible that they are taking inspirations from mythology or stories, already told in the past, but they will weave the plot in such a way that theme of their plots will be successful in presenting issues prevalent in the contemporary times.

Great writers have their strong control over observation of the three phases of the time, the past, the present and the future. They have ability to use their own mother tongue, no matter its not recognised world wide, to tell their stories and these stories will have global impact and in some manner will cover human being all over the world. They have deep observation of what has been going on and what may happen in future and they weave …

Its not everyday that a bunch of filmmakers I like, get together and converse on the medium. For such occasions I always had to depend on film festivals or even take a trip back in time during those glory days of DD. Most such occasion are fruitful when the moderator/interviewer is as well versed or at least someone who can hold his/her own amongst such august company.

Imagine, the thrill when Sudhir, presented the link to this gup-shup between Anurag, Navdeep, Rajat conducted by none other than Bharadwaj Rangan.

All about Old vs New Parallel Cinema - a lovely read this.

Excerpts

Nearly two decades after the demise of what was called Parallel Cinema, three filmmakers from a new age of non-mainstream cinema open up about then and now.

B Rangan: What is your personal opinion of the Parallel Cinema movement of the 1970s/80s?

Rajat Kapoor: I think great beginnings were made. There …

MOVIES AND REAL LIFE

Some days back, I saw an interview of Sudhir Mishra on Sahara Filmy by Mayank Shekhar. Mishraji told �Today�s film makers watch movies, not life� They are engaged in watching movies, discussing movies but they do not devote their time to watching, analyzing life. 100% correct.

Some so called biggest filmmakers claim their film�s connectivity to real life. They give very stylish, larger than life films. Making is stylish, larger than life films is not a bad thing. But their films do not connect with common man. Why?

Because�..
- They do not research properly for their films. They do not know minor rules of Indian culture like in Hindus, women do not go to shamshan for Agnisanskar. I have seen in many films by so called biggest filmmakers that women were present in shamshaan in a white cotton sarees.

- Human behavior (physical, mental, biological) is not properly analyzed. …