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Browsing All Posts filed under »Cinema: Kannada«
The Amateur’s Art #21- “Kivi Maathu” (Kannada, with English subs)
See here for what this series is about. This short has been written and directed by Sandeep Kumar. Short Synopsis: Dayanand, a regular waiter at a bar is thrown into turmoil when he gets a call from his wife informing him that their daughter has eloped. The words of wisdom coming from a un-precedented corner […]
A very big man
June 15, 2017
A flashback to moments from the 1972 Kannada drama ‘Vamsha Vruksha’, the story of a widow who remakes her life. Read the full article on Film Companion, here: https://www.filmcompanion.in/article/southern-lights-vamsha-vriksha Can a man be both traditional and modern? Can a Brahmin believe in rites and rituals and the Hindu way of life (which, sometimes, can be […]
The old man and the hill
April 27, 2017
A flashback to moments from the 2002 Kannada drama ‘Dweepa’, where the construction of a dam threatens an ancient way of life. Read the full article on Film Companion, here: https://www.filmcompanion.in/article/southern-lights-the-old-man-and-the-hill Only the lower gates of the dam have been closed, and already the water levels have climbed to half the height of the hill […]
The seller of fish
March 30, 2017
A deep dive into moments from the 2014 Kannada neo-noir drama ‘Ulidavaru Kandante’, which details the search for a man through the people who knew him. A journalist is in search of a story, a story about a man named Ritchie. One of the people she interviews, a cashew nut seller named Shailesha, tells her, […]
Wheatish complexion, average build
March 16, 2017
A deep dive into moments from the 2016 Kannada drama ‘Godhi Banna Sadharna Mykattu’, which is about finding a father. And finding out about a father Shiva is one of those harried urban professionals who’s always on a call, but when his Alzheimer’s-afflicted father, Venkob Rao, goes missing, Shiva finds he has to let go […]
“Kirik Party”… A joyous, irresistible coming-of-age tale
January 8, 2017
Spoilers ahead… The Kannada hit, Kirik Party, is the latest entry in the genre we could call South India’s answer to the South Bombay movie. The vibe is similarly cool, the sensibility similarly young, the air similarly irreverent, but there’s one crucial difference. The feel is grounded, recognisably rooted. The kids in the South Bombay […]
“U Turn”… No ‘Lucia,’ but still a smart, engaging mystery
May 28, 2016
Spoilers ahead… Pawan Kumar is the rare writer-director who does justice to the job descriptions on either side of the hyphen. U Turn, his follow-up to the buzzy and justly acclaimed Lucia, begins with a lovely scene, in an auto, between Rachana (Shraddha Srinath) and her mother. The scene is essentially to establish that the […]
Village people
May 28, 2016
Thoughts on ‘Thithi’, a small film with big buzz and bigger ambitions. The burden of expectation can sometimes be too much for a small film. Raam Reddy’s Kannada directorial debut Thithi won last year’s National Award for Best Feature Film in Kannada, which seems just about right. When we think “National Award-winning film,” we think […]
Common men, uncommon stories
August 15, 2015
On the eve of the release of ‘Manjhi – The Mountain Man’, Baradwaj Rangan traces the journey of our biopics, which are no longer just about larger-than-life achievers. It all began in 1959, when a landless Bihari from the Musahar community, a scheduled caste that traditionally made a living as rat catchers, decided to make […]
The natural
February 14, 2014
Balu Mahendra, who died yesterday of cardiac arrest, was one of the handful of filmmakers who, in the 1970s, changed the face of Tamil cinema. He was also one of the handful who could be termed an auteur. Every film he made was distinctly his. Part of this was, of course, due to his roots […]
Lights, Camera, Conversation… “Stranger than fiction”
September 20, 2013
An entertaining new Kannada film pushes the envelope even as it pays homage to the old way of doing things. An usher at a single-screen cinema hall (Nikhil, played by Sathish Neenasam) pops a pill and begins to dream that he is a film star (also named Nikhil, but let’s call him Nikhil-2 so we […]
Films & Feni: The Big Bong
December 2, 2009
THE BIG BONG DEC 2, 2009 – THE PHRASE “FILMED PLAY” HAS, by now, entered the lexicon of moviemaking as an embarrassing pejorative, an indication that declamatory acting and theatrical mise en scène has been foisted upon us in the name of cinema. But the Brazilian director, Daniel Filho, in his thrillingly dramatic Tempos de […]
June 17, 2017
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