Winds From The East

Cinema as an activist tool will only survive when the artist stands behind his work with conviction, and continues to struggle for his cause. Activism for a cause does not provide instant results; instead it is a constant struggle between competing truths, whose boundaries are so thin that one can easily slip through them. Art is all around us – we have numerous painters, singers, and filmmakers – but true artists who are concerned with the truth and using art as a medium of activism are becoming harder to find each day Read More --------- UPDATES- - Indian Auteur- Cinephile Meeting 2nd: Please visit for details on listing. - There is a slight delay for the second issue due to technical reasons. Please do check our the the contents of our first issue and other features on the site. - ISSUE NO-1 - Contest, Cine Experience to be annoucned soon.

Kshitiz Anand I love to critique. Being in a field in which I am always surrounded by the different forms of art that have been created, there is always a scope for criticism. So photographs that I take are criticized, and so are the designs that I make and I do so the same for any movie I see. Now there is a difference between the art of critiquing and the art of reviewing. While reviews are targeted for the common, general audience who do not have a flair for work, critiques are often targeted at a very specific audience. When we view an art / design we start with an impression of it. Over a time we start to develop an opinion about it. And these opinions over a period turn into judgments. These judgments are what we call critiques. Thus if we analyze, any judgment is therefore ultimately what is what the judge thinks about it. And these judgments are subjective. Thus criticism is a subjective act. A critic is a judge of a piece of art, who gives his or her subjective judgments base...

Part 1 Apu Death Railways PART -2 The Railway Motif. Prof. Satish Bahadur I use the term railways motif, rather than the limited term train motif. The railways include trains and also engines, wagons, bogies, railway stations, platforms, human details on platforms, and in passenger bogies... also technological artifacts like rail tracks, shunting yards, signals, bridges, embankments, telegraph lines running along the rail track, and (add on) landscape seen from running trains, (... keep on adding...) rumble of a train, whistle of an engine... smoke from an engine. The railways are in the ambience of the Indian landscape and the Indian socialscape. Hence, they occur in the background of several scenes in the Apu Trilogy. The fiction of the Trilogy is essentially a design of developing human relations of the Apu story, and the railways recur with the palpable consistency of an integral element of the design. We need to trace this in the design of the Trilogy. Running the railways is an a...

Anuj Malhotra PART I : OF DUMBNESS AND THE ISSUE OF THE NORM From IBN TV18 Film host/reviewer Rajeev Masand’s recent review of Ghajini, a certain line is very interesting, carries great repercussions and yet, is present in such a casual, off-hand manner that it not only discards the gravity of the issue, but makes it seem that the writer has come to terms with it. The line goes- “Ghajini is a film which is dumb and celebrates its dumbness” The recent success of Ghajini, all commercial ofcourse, reveals a few collective national tendencies. We as a nation prefer restaurants with waiters instead of the ones which demand of us to self-serve. We love escalator and elevators. The concept of ‘home delivery’, though invented by some shrewd commercial mind in the Western hemisphere, eventually had us as its target. We also are a nation who stand in front of an artificial Taj Mahal background, and get our family portraits clicked. We do not go visit Agra. Basically, assuming the reader is one ...

A PROPOSITION A conversation on state of affairs. Mr X: The image 'true' symbolizes the death of sovereignty in India. Mr Y: The image 'false' does not exist in India. Mr X: You don't seem to value human life and the innocent who lost their loved ones. Mr Y. I do sir… I can understand their emotions. Long back, my best friend was shot in front of my eyes, from a point blank range- on his head. I didn’t know the word terrorist then...all I could muster to the cops was that a human had shot him. Neither did I know that he would not return, and only his images in my memory would accompany me. I bet you never heard about the gunshot though. It came from a remote corner that is often not part of media focus. So I do understand the emotions and grief of losing someone, especially, if they were shot in front of you. And it’s even sadder when soon the image of their grief is lost and only remains part of personal memories. Mr X. But can’t you see India is burning….it’s a f...

( An essay to propose a more balanced style of criticism. ) Anuj M. Malhotra Exercise to begin with. See the images below:- Now, lets commence. I seek to make clear at the very outset that I have disregard for any notion, so lofty, that it is higher than the art that is ultimately its subject. My disregard in the matter, is shared by an opinion or a critique which discusses the intricacies of construction, while discarding the constructed, and as a consequence, disposing the beauty of instinct. I have a Caulfield like cynicism for their very motive, and believe they are conceited, and basically convoluted waste of text that can be done away with. To those to whom, this opening might seem unhealthily impassioned, I have my reasons. The process of creation should, in my opinion, never outweigh the creation itself. Art scholars, or so-called, have expressed long discourse of how various thoughts converged and ...