By Thulasidasan Jeewaratinam (Written this when Annaathe came out and my recent viewing of Varisu only confirms this as timely. Posting only now). My recent viewing of Annaatthe confirmed my long-running doubts over the arcs Tamil Cinema was shaping (the extent of which this discussion prevails in other Indian language cinema(s) is excluded from this, […]
January 16, 2023
By Kartik Iyer Vaalvi is a Marathi movie that was released on the same date as Kuttey did: 13th January. It looks like it is made on a budget that is easily 1\4th of the budget of Kuttey, if not less. Despite the shortcomings of a small budget, independent funding, and a small, little-understood and underfed audience, Vaalvi is a far superior product […]
December 8, 2022
April 3, 2022
Spoilers ahead… This is a biopic about not a person but the essence of a person, which is his music. Even though we see the story beats, the idea, the concept of music is always in the forefront. A little after Chaitanya Tamhane’s The Disciple, Marathi cinema gives us another deep-dive saga of classical music: […]
February 10, 2021
https://www.filmcompanion.in/opinion/hollywood-opinion/oscars-2021-nominations-jallikattu-india-entry-lijo-jose-pellisserys-jallikattu-is-out-of-the-oscar-race-but-it-was-always-a-long-shot-malayalam-movies/ The only way to hope for a shot at the Academy Awards is to make India matter in the eyes of Uncle Oscar as a “country that makes good movies”. As always, there was this dim hope that we’d make it to the shortlist, at least. After all, we’d picked a really deserving film, […]
January 30, 2021
https://www.filmcompanion.in/film-festivals/sundance-film-festival-2021/sundance-film-festival-2021-india-lata-alisha-tejpal-mumbai-im-not-interested-in-passive-cinema-baradwaj-rangan/ The 22-minute short, which is in Competition, focuses on a domestic labourer in an upper-class home in Mumbai. Alisha Tejpal says, “My biggest question in Indian cinema across the decades, at least for me growing up in Mumbai, is the way domestic labour has been framed. How do I write a film about a domestic […]
December 6, 2020
(by Kartik Iyer) The Disciple is dense. It is an intricate screenplay. The story of its central protagonist, Sharad Nerulkar, is connected to multiple ideas. These range from musings on the nature of creation, relationship between two generations, idealism and its drawbacks to commercialisation of art and the limits of human effort. Chaitanya Tamhana, writer […]
November 30, 2020
(by Suresh S) There are two measures by which Chaitanya Tamhane‘s new film The Disciple may be measured. First, as a follow-up to Court, his seminal exploration of the machinery of the Indian legal system. Court was the antithesis of all Indian legal dramas that had appeared till then (and even most foreign films I […]
September 5, 2020
“A part of the film is about a musician going through an existential crisis about his art. Cinema, too, is going through this crisis, even though it’s a much younger art.” It’s the day after the premiere of The Disciple at the Venice Film Festival. How is Chaitanya Tamhane feeling? “Good,” he says over the […]
July 6, 2020
(by Ninad Kulkarni) A dialogue from Ashutosh Gowariker’s Swades, “Jo kabhi nahi jaati woh jati”. (The one element that never castaway is a caste) makes an ever-lasting remark. The practices of casteism are prevalent in the remote areas where education has a far-fetched impact, nevertheless, even urban areas have fallen prey for the practice – […]
February 27, 2020
World-premiering at the Berlinale, this Marathi drama will compete for the Crystal Bear for Best Film in the Generation Kplus section. Spoilers ahead… You can read the full review on Film Companion, here: https://www.filmcompanion.in/sthalpuran-chronicle-of-space-movie-review-in-akshay-indikars-deeply-felt-portrait-of-a-young-boy-technique-replaces-traditional-storytelling/ Childhood is usually the most dynamic phase of existence. Even those of us who grow up ball-and-chained to desk jobs begin […]
November 13, 2019
Read the full article on Film Companion, here: https://www.filmcompanion.in/vinod-kamble-kastoori-marathi-dharamsala-international-film-fest-baradwaj-rangan At the Dharamsala International Film Festival, a powerful drama about a boy who cleans toilets and performs post-mortems in order to pay for school. Vinod Kamble’s Kastoori (Marathi) opens with an Indian-style toilet filled with shit. The screening at the Dharamsala International Film Festival (DIFF) was […]
June 17, 2019
Read the full article on Film Companion, here: https://www.filmcompanion.in/remembering-girish-karnad-the-director-the-actor/ From ‘Kaadu’ and ‘Ondanondu Kaladalli’ to ‘Nishant’ and ‘Swami’, one of India’s greatest playwrights made a huge contribution to Indian cinema. If Girish Karnad’s passing weren’t sad enough, the headlines about the “Tiger Zinda Hai actor passing away” were sadder. I suppose the logic was that […]
June 14, 2018
Read the full article on Film Companion, here: https://www.filmcompanion.in/baradwaj-rangan-kaala-review-critics-mani-ratnam-twitter-conversations-southern-cinema-bias/ Because it’s impossible to have a proper conversation on Twitter, I imagine a chat with critics of my ‘Kaala’ review and argue why form is important and why ‘Mani Ratnam’ isn’t a bad word. There may be spoilers ahead if you haven’t seen ‘Kaala’. So you’re […]
January 25, 2018
Read the full article on Film Companion, here: http://www.filmcompanion.in/southern-lights-tamil-cinema-english-thoughts/ In which I make a case that there needs to be more writing about non-Hindi cinema in English, if this cinema is to break through ghettos. I interviewed two authors at this year’s edition of the The Hindu’s Lit for Life. One of them was a […]
October 9, 2017
Spoilers ahead… Manda (Kadambari Kadam) is one of the many extras on the fringes of filmdom, as replaceable as the next one, but one thing sets her apart: she won’t sleep with the agent to get ahead. He insists. She protests. She says she’s here to be an actress, not a whore. Given how the […]
January 28, 2017
2See here for what this series is about. This short is by Aditya Sanjay Joshi. Story & Dialogue – Pranao Lepse Screenplay – Aditya Washimkar & Aditya Sanjay Joshi Editor – Aditya Sanjay Joshi Director of Photography – Soham Navghare Planning and Co-ordination – Prachin Bhoyar Starring – Pranao Lepse and Priya Thavare
June 18, 2016
The ‘Udta Punjab’ verdict fills me with enough hope to draw up a laundry list of wishes for our cinema. The next time a demand for a ban comes up, I wish we’d remember the Udta Punjab verdict. I wish we’d stop being blackmailed by cultural policemen about the content in cinema. Most of us […]
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 […]
April 28, 2016
The following is based on the cut of the film screened at the Berlinale this year. And yes, spoilers ahead… In Nagraj Popatrao Manjule’s first film, Fandry, a dark-skinned, poverty-stricken Dalit boy tried to get the attention of a fair-skinned upper-caste (and upper-class) girl. What if he got her attention? What if she started liking […]
January 18, 2023
37