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Browsing All Posts filed under »Cinema: Festivals«
Lights, Camera, Conversation… “Pictures for posterity”
A fascinating new documentary throws the spotlight on an indefatigable preserver of Indian cinema. Who is PK Nair? The release of Shivendra Singh Dungarpur’s Celluloid Man should answer this question for a general audience – at least, the audience that gets around to watching two-and-a-half hour documentaries. A word about the form, first. Thanks to […]
Lights, Camera, Conversation… “The amour for art cinema”
December 28, 2012
Why define “great movies” based on a cold and clinical foreign ideal of greatness, especially when so many foreign filmmakers are already making those kinds of great movies? One question I’m routinely asked when interviewed or at a casual dinner discussion is when our cinema will grow up, become more like “foreign cinema.” And by […]
Showcase: Cannes job
April 28, 2012
Isn’t it strange that the directors competing for the Palme d’Or are always those of entrenched repute? Who makes the world’s best films, at least the ones fit enough to fight it out in the competition section of film festivals? If this year’s Cannes lineup is to be believed, it’s the same contenders. The festival […]
Lights, Camera, Conversation… “A lavish spread of cinema”
December 23, 2011
In the jam-packed schedules of film festivals, is it possible to savour the films you see? To some extent, yes. To some people in Chennai, this weekend portends nothing but sleep, blissful sleep that will not be interrupted by an alarm meant to drive them to a morning screening, followed by others in the afternoon […]
A world of cinema
December 11, 2011
133 films from 53 countries. Plus, the Indian Panorama. Plus, Tamil films in competition. The 9th Chennai International Film Festival has it all. Long before a film festival prints its official bulletin – that thumb-thick catalogue with glossy pictures and synopses to help you decide which 11 a.m. screening is likely to prove most rewarding […]
Rossellini, Fellini and their sister Nalini
December 10, 2011
On the eve of the 9th Chennai International Film Festival, Kamal Haasan explains why these events are important and how they’ve changed his life. Do you remember the first foreign film you saw? I consider even Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello, and the John Wayne movies as foreign films. That was probably the first […]
Showcase: A portal to a private world
December 10, 2011
The glass-half-empty aspect of the Hsiao-hsien Hou retrospective at the 9th Chennai International Film Festival (14-22 December 2011) is the absence of the dreamy Flight of the Red Balloon. But lovers of languorously paced cinema will claim that the glass is half full simply because of this rare opportunity to sample the Taiwanese auteur’s films […]
Lights, Camera, Conversation… “The big problem with small talk”
November 25, 2011
Critics are easy to strike up a conversation with when you run into them, but who listens till the end? When you’re introduced as a critic at a gathering, you know that the others out there – the ones you will end up talking to for a few minutes as you wend your way around […]
Lights, Camera, Conversation… “Reviewing a Reviewer”
October 21, 2011
A decade after her death, Pauline Kael is suddenly everywhere. And it’s because she was more than just a “critic.” I hate the word “critic.” The online dictionaries offer a spectrum of definitions, scattered between “a professional judge of art, music, literature, etc.” and “a person who often finds fault and criticizes,” but it’s the […]
Lights, Camera, Conversation… “And the Winner Isn’t…”
September 30, 2011
It’s easy to say that “Jeans” and “Saagar” aren’t worthy of Oscar nominations. It’s tougher to say which films are.
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April 26, 2013
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