The story of making "Lagaan," one of the millennium's seminal Indian films, is told from the point of view of production team member Satyajit Bhatkal.
104 Matches Found
The story of making "Lagaan," one of the millennium's seminal Indian films, is told from the point of view of production team member Satyajit Bhatkal.
The making of the Tarsem Singh's fantasy-film 'The Fall'. Behind the scenes: Part I.
A documentary that traces the life and times of Bhagat Singh, a committed Marxist who most ably exemplified the spirit of revolutionary resistance against British imperialism in undivided India.
The multilingual Bombay, the Bombay of intolerance, the Bombay of closed textile mills, of popular culture, sprawling slums and real estate onslaughts, the metropolis of numerous ghettos, the El Dorado. This film is a tale of the cities of Bom Bahia / Bombay / Mumbai, through a tapestry of fiction, cinema vérité, art objects, found footage, sound installation and literary texts. It is a chronicle of the journey of a scattered bunch of insignificant fishing hamlets to the coveted stature of a prime metropolis. The narrative is structured around fictional exchanges between Ismat Chugtai and Sadat Hasan Manto, the two legendary writers who lived in this metropolis, over the art of chronicling these multi-layered overlapping cities.
Filmed in India over six years and narrated by Academy Award winning actor, Helen Mirren, YES MADAM, SIR is a ‘David and Goliath’ epic story profiling Asia Nobel Prize winner, Kiran Bedi – India’s first woman police officer.
Loknayak is a 2004 biographical film based on the life of Bharat Ratna Jayaprakash Narayan (JP).[1] It was directed by Prakash Jha in 2004.[2] Actor Chetan Pandit enacted the role of Jayaprakash Narayan and Tisca Chopra played role of Prabhavati Devi, wife of JP Narayan.
An impressionistic sketch of ‘the public’ as created by our cinema and its relationship with cinema itself.
The film highlighted the importance of childhood education and sought to create awareness of early dropouts and child labour in Tamil Nadu.
This is a video about the Park Street cemetery in Calcutta - one of the earliest colonial cemeteries in the world – its degrading conditions and its status as an abandoned legacy of an empire lost and forgotten.
This biographical film on M. S. Subbulakshmi portrays how this ancient and glorious tradition of carnatic music, got enriched by fervent devotion and Bhakti Bhavana of M. S. Subbulakshmi and how she rose as 'A Legend Forever' and is treated with equal reverence and affection by millions of music lovers all over the world.
This award-winning documentary explores the changing face of right-wing politics in India through a study of the 2002 Gujarat Riots. It specifically examines political tendencies reminiscent of the Nazi Germany of early 1930s. Final Solution is anti-hate/violence, as 'those who forget history are condemned to relive it'.
A documentary about human-powered manual ferris wheel rides at Juhu beach in Mumbai.
A film on feminine legacy of rebellion, language and transgressions. Using the composition of Mahadevi Akka, a 13th century saint-poet, the film explores the multiplicity of contemporary women and their own points of transgressions.
‘Black pamphlets’ follows the pace of the twelve-day election campaign, and meets characters in the journey and builds its narrative through them.
An ascetic walks through the narrow streets of a village every morning while his family is still asleep. In his semi-somnolent state he dreams about the history of the village mixing up myths, folklore and facts.
Vipin Vijay's Palace of the Winds is a poetic essay about that "Holy Little Box," the radio, conceived of as a ghostly transmitter of Indian cultural artifacts.
This film explores multinational shoe company Bata’s impact on individual lives and their surroundings. The film’s aesthetic, shifting from site to site and shot to shot, offers pockets as a visual version of the bubble that was the Bata colony itself. The characters are all connected to that past. They guide the viewers through the merging of past and present in memory. The film’s colouration also evokes this mixture.
Winner of 2 National Awards, Pancham Unmixed: Mujhe Chalte Jaana Hai, takes an incisive look into the legendary composer, RD Burman's reflective artistry and buoyant-but-also-lonely inner being. Featuring a host of close friends, colleagues and admirers, the film evokes awe, admiration and nostalgia the way most of his music does, till date.
A look at three typical employees on Indian Railways as they fight the annual battle to keep the railway service running during the monsoon season.
Lakshmi is a professional singer and dancer at funerals. Krishnaveni makes her living by burying and cremating unclaimed dead bodies from the rivers and streets. Sethuraku never went to school and instead took to the sea at an early age.
For millennia, the Irulas, an ancient tribe of hunter gatherers from the dark jungles of the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, have stalked these woods looking for snakes of all hues.
A film about home and belonging, tracing the filmmaker's personal journey to understand what it means to be a Muslim in India today.
The film explores Mirabai as a cultural icon, revealing her poetry's conflicts with popular beliefs, despite the overwhelming influence of her images and stories.
Documentary about the nuclear sabre-rattling that has been going on between India and Pakistan. Comprised mostly of interviews with average folks on the street, the movie superbly demonstrates the gulf between the people's will and the greed of those in power.
Who’s Sandra? If you saw her would you know her? Is she naughty or is she nice? And where is she anyway? This film takes a playful look at the figure of “Sandra from Bandra” – part covetous fantasy of the racy Christian girl from Bombay who works as a secretary, wears a dress and likes to dance; part condescending stereotype of a dowdy, religious girl from a minority community. The film searches for Sandra in Bollywood films, in the words of writers and poets, on the gravestones in Bandra’s churchyard. We encounter various claimants to the title – some who aren’t from Bandra and some who aren’t even called Sandra. Finally we find 5 women who really are Sandra from Bandra, each as different from the other as can be even if they are all a little bit the same.
A film about creating awareness for HIV/AIDS and drug abuse in India.
Kshurasyadhara (The Razor's Edge), based on the temple oracles of Kerala. The film premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR),2002 and was shown in film festivals at Tehran, Milan, International Film Festival of Kerala, MIFF. "Kshurasyadhara" won the best Malayalam film commendation award 2001, Indian Documentary Producer's Association (IDPA), Best Director Award of the Kerala State Film & TV Awards 2001, and the National Jury award of the Mumbai International short & Animation film festival (MIFF) in 2002. "Kshurasyadhara" is now a part of permanent archives at the United States Library of Congress.
Film on caste system in India's historic times.
Kumar Gandharva or Shivaputra Siddharamayya Komkalimath was a Hindustani classical singer, well known for his unique vocal style and his refusal to be bound by the tradition of any gharana.
The contemporary relevance and future of oldest classical music.
Kabir was a 15th century mystic poet of north India who defied the boundaries between Hindu and Muslim. He had a Muslim name and upbringing, but his poetry repeatedly invokes the widely revered Hindu name for God – Ram. Who is Kabir’s Ram? This film journeys through song and poem into the politics of religion, and finds a myriad answers on both sides of the hostile border between India and Pakistan.
The village artist Jangarh Singh Shyam left home and became a well-known contemporary painter. He committed suicide in 2001. Through his art, places and stories, the filmmaker explores the traces he left on his path.
An anthology of Marathi Cinema from 1885 to 1980.
A rural artist paints her autobiography, Bollywood movie icons’ images get erased after the weekly run of the film, the national flag flutters on 150 kites, an installation artist paints pop icons on the rolling shutters of the shops, religious icons jostle for attention with Chinese plastic flowers on the vendor’s cart, metaphors of life cycle adorn the mud wall of a home, neighbourhood boys craft the tale of WTC and the sale of toy planes goes up. Symbols of nationalism become a fashionable commodity. Made in India is a film on contemporary visual cultures in India. India, the ever alert and over forgetful, often intolerant, pluri-lingual, pluri-cultural conglomeration of multiple simultaneity.
What kind of democracy does India have today? Using Gandhi’s famous Dandi salt march through Gujarat as a starting point, this road-movie style documentary looks at contemporary India, the world’s biggest democracy, and explores the significance of the Gandhian legacy of peace and non-violence for democratic movements in the twenty first century.
A collection of images from Mumbai, India.
A film about creating awareness for HIV/AIDS in truck drivers in India.
This biographical film is a tribute to a pioneering actress Smita Patil through her works a tribute to the parallel cinema. Her realistic dignified portrayals of the emerging women's movement in India creating a space for women on screen and role models for them off-screen.
“What sin did I commit to be born a woman?” Lakshmi wonders aloud. A 21- year-old housemaid in Mumbai, she works ten hours a day, seven days a week. One of her employer is Nishtha Jain, who begins to make a documentary that explores their relationship. Nishtha films Lakshmi at home, and at work in various houses. Lakshmi's is a precarious existence to begin with; illness and romance compound her problems in unexpected ways.
Documentary film based on the artist Akbar Padamsee.
Rasikapriya’ is a cinematic exploration- the camera's desperate attempt to "see" music. The journey becomes a meditation on Indian rock paintings, sculpture, nature and cities and what the camera manages to create is a canvas of vivid calligraphic designs that often allude to poetry and rhythms of Indian classical music.
‘Beyond Boundaries’ was an Indo-Pak street children initiative. It was a response to the growing communal tension in the region. Cricket, a much revered subcontinental game, was the bridge that brought street children together to play cricket across both borders.
Music has the capacity to breathe life into a cinematic image. The evolution of Hindi film music has been shaped by technological changes in the recording industry as well as other cultural forces like the local Ramlila tradition, the narrative structures of Hindi films and the rising prominence of women characters within those narratives. But despite these wide range of influences, what remains central to Hindi film music is the way the sounds, lyrics and notes touch a chord with the common man. From the streets of Bombay, to the local barber shops and the booming remixes floating in urban clubs that has generations of youth gyrating to the beats very few spaces have been left untouched by Hindi music. Arun Khopkar's musical journey is accompanied by equally joyous camera movements and thus, manages to provide a nuanced understanding of the elements of Hindi film music and how the orchestra, percussion and western influences created a harmonious confluence of unique musical patterns.
"India" developed out of my three journeys to Pune in 2001, 2002 and 2004. I arrived in a forgein country, and felt surprisingly familiar in the foreign. There in the streets, walking among the people, surrounded by their movements, their gestures, by the colors, the light, the beauty. Small things awakened my attention, sometimes only a short glimpse, a hand movement, the color of a sari, a temple hidden in a courtyard. It was like a long hot bath that I took there in Pune's streets - something unique and very beautiful.
“He said Mr. Sethna, what are you? I said I’m a human being. Then… I’m an Indian. Then I suppose, I am a Zoroastrian, or if you like, a Parsi. Then my profession. I’m a filmmaker.” A journey through a very unusual old man’s life in Bombay.
In 1930, a group of Indians led by a frail, elderly man marched a distance of 241 miles. They marched for salt. Mahatma Gandhi was able to craft an anti-colonial, nationalist movement around the most basic issue of livelihood: the right of Indians to make and consume their own salt. 77 years later, the Wide Eye Film team followed the trail of the famous Dandi salt march, stopping at the same villages and towns, in search of Gandhi's legacy. Set against the backdrop of Gandhi's original journey, this is a road movie about issues of livelihood in modern, globalizing India. It is a documentary about 'the salt stories' of our times.
A documentary that follows a group of kothis (gay men who identify as femme) in Belgaum, a small city in Karnataka, and traces their stories of love, desire, and ostracization, as well as their work with an NGO that promotes safe-sex practices.
Interweaving the folk music traditions of the mystic poet Kabir with the life and music of the late Indian classical singer Kumar Gandharva, this film searches for that elusive sound, that "jhini si awaaz", that Kabir urges us to hear. Where does it resonate, that subtle sound? Journeying between folk and classical, oral and written, rural and urban expressions of this 15th century mystic poet of north India, the film finds moments of both continuity and rupture between these disparate worlds.
The film throws light on the role of the Satra & Namghar in the evolution of genesis of Assamese identity. The Satra and Naamghars were set up by Shankarcharya, with religious aspect it became a part and parcel of Assamese social and cultural life.
Pravahi is a film that documents and cinematically interperts the dance of Alarmel Valli, one of India’s foremost Bharatanatyam dancer.
A documentary on the struggle of Tamil writer Sundara Ramaswamy to evolve modern literature in a society stuck with caste identities, traditional hypocrisy and language chauvinism.
‘A Night of Prophecy’ is a film about poetry, songs and the passage of time through multiple journeys along fault lines in a democracy. Interrogating the nation, its history and future the film and the poets open up an underbelly seldom experienced.
The fabric of the city emerged from the warp and weft of diverse threads, from the labour of migrant communities that made Bombay/Mumbai their own.
From the vast coastlines of Tamil Nadu, to the arid lands of Rajasthan and the lush greenery of Sikkim, the camera joins local children on the journeys of their daily lives: to and from school, in their classes and after-school play, and doing chores. The children are shy but face the camera directly to talk about their families, their teachers, and their own feelings. Their gazes imply straightforward doubts about the adult world, which the director captures, in taking a sincere look at the meaning of education.
The idea of determinism and freedom in the Khayal tradition of Hindustani music.
Film is about Patachitra Paintings in rural West Bengal, where images of Hindu gods are made by Muslim community.
VOLUME ZERO is an hour-long documentary on the work and the ideas of Charles Correa, one of the world’s most important architects. It deals with his childhood, architectural training, formative years and the paradigm underlying his large and complex oeuvre spanning over five decades – as well as his pivotal role in addressing issues of urbanization in the Developing World. It uses first person narration by the filmmaker, combined with extended excerpts of interviews with Correa, live action, stills, diagrams, animation and archival footage to open up the thought processes that generate architectural space and form.