IA talks about experimental auteur Tom Chomont and examines his role in the hierarchy of the 1960s Structuralist Cinema in America, while also inaugurating its annual Film Critic Symposium in its Issue 11 READ MORE
2008 The year is drawing to a close and top-ten lists have already started hitting the Internet. While going through several list of the, ‘Best movies of the year- distributed and non-distributed,’ it’s sad and remarkable to see the omission of Indian films. Over the years, there seems to be either ignorance on part of film festivals, critics, organizers about our cinema or in a country of over billion people,we are not able to make one worthwhile film that could transcend boundaries and cultural space- irrespective of being Indian. Beside let’s make this clear- Slumdog Millionaire is not an Indian film as the media seemed to project, rather it’s a British film with an Indian context. And so instead of proclaiming this as our conquest on the global stage, we should lament why anyone from our own industry couldn’t achieve this feat. While it's high time we should move on from talking about our scripts reaching the Oscar library or the growth of Bollywood in the US and UK box-offic
Satyajit Ray Date of Publication: 2004-06-03 Language: English Author: Amitav Ghosh In 1989, during my first extended stay in New York, I was suddenly struck by a wave of Ray nostalgia. It was no coincidence perhaps that I had recently finished writing The Shadow Lines, which is, of all my novels, the one that more clearly shows the influence of Satyajit Ray. It struck me that Ray too had once been a stranger in this overwhelming city; that he too had walked the streets on Manhattan in Kolkata-bought shoes. One day, plucking up my courage, I made an appointment with the director James Ivory, who I knew to be a friend of Ray's. Later that week I went to interview Ivory, cassette recorder in hand. This is how Ivory described his first meeting with Ray, in the winter of 1960: 'I looked him up in Calcutta,' Ivory said. 'I had never met him. I had seen at that point, Pather Panchali ('Song of the Road') and Aparajito ('Undefeated'). I knew that Apur Sansar (&
THE DELHI MANIFESTO Our cinema screen has become an ill-constructed, and conventional portal to a world we aspire of, rather than a mirror, which reflects us. Our emotions are guided by leitmotifs placed deftly, and religious beliefs exploited. Our spirit of inquiry has become dead and we have been reduced to mere receivers in the process. Cinema and television has replaced interaction with imposition of thought. Its thought. An artificial, fake and ill-created thought, a manifestation of our needs to escape ourselves. The medium has become a symbol of cheap entertainment, devoid of any examination of the form, and a victim of our collective need to create personalities, perfect alternate universes, and images of our aspiration. Our criticism has become trivial. Stories take precedent over the intrinsic qualities of the cinematic medium. Our film lovers are snobs, indulging in their wholehearted pseudo-intellectual diatribe, condemning the ignorant, and the ignorant have become so used
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