Winds From The East

- Debojit Ghatak A report on the recently concluded Russian Cine Experience. The programming for the week of Russian cinema was planned in way that one moved back in time from the contemporary Russian cinema to a retrospective on Tarkovsky and then back to 1925 through Battleship Potemkin. After the inauguration which involved the lighting of the lamp by young cinephiles, the series of screenings commenced with Oksana Bychkova’s Piter Fm, a film disliked by all are team members but liked by the audience. And since the first day is always difficult to break the ice among the audience, this conflict was the perfect provocation for the audience and the team to get involved in an active discussion on the film. The next day, Ostrov/The Island by Pavel Lungin was screened. The film is about a spiritual transition of a guilt stricken man, and how he overcomes the fear of death by the end of the film. Anatoly, the father of the island, had once killed an innocent m...

" Someday we will steal dreams of superstars in Bollywood and help rebuild Manipur" CineDarbaar is organizing a Russian Cine Experience from the 15th-21st of May 2009. This is the third cine experience from our sister organization. While the world will be celebrating the Cannes film festival, we are happy looking back in time. Perhaps that is the only passage to guide us to a bright future. So that someday we can move beyond out-of-competitions screenings and establish a regular serious film criticism magazine. Every cine experience is not just about the film but what follows before and after the film. Because it’s these two entry point that separates us from every other film screenings that are happening in Delhi. It may not be something new in comparison with rest of the world. But for us, the idea to introduce, screen and distribute printed leaflets and then discuss is pivotal. It’s the backbone on which we all are growing. Today, our spaces have become very private an...

We're overwhelmed when one of our favourite auteur Buddhadeb Dasgupta left us a note on the article written by Supriya Suri on his three films: " To read the wonderful articles you've written on three of my films! For a filmmaker,they greatest gift is to have an audience who understands, feels,identifies with his/her expression, rather the various aspects of his expressions!I must say your articles are very inspiring. Go ahead . I had a silent suffering that serious writing on cinema have probably faded away from our country! When we started, there were writers who actually studied cinema and understood its nuances as wellas technicalities, most importantly loved cinema!These days its been more commercialised and shallow!Thank you for loving cinema and exploring it the way you did ." One of the core focuses of the website is to inform readers about different cinematic style, history of cinema and on the theory and application of film criticism. This is the sole reaso...

Our Website/First Issue Cinephile Meeting: Last Call Pulp Fiction. Anuj writes... On the verge of Oscars, a perspective to the perspective which questions Slumdog Millionaire, as being a derogatory prostitution to the West, of the realities which no one apart from us has a right to show (and see). In the Slumdog debate, most of us, are the policemen. The cynics. We are the ones who cannot believe that a poor chaiwallah(tea seller) can win so much. It’s we who thus fault the film on what we assume is its incoherence with logic. The problem lies with us. Not the film. Read More More on Slumdog: Cinephile Meeting: Patna : Of Slumdog Lookout for Delhi 6 review tomorrow. And...Slumdog Millionaire is not an Indian film. Film Education Anya , writ...