Film & Theatre

By Soumya Pande Toto, now all grown and grey, watches the spliced film reel left for him by Alfredo. Tears stream down his face as a montage of all those romantic scenes that were deemed objectionable by the parish, and had to be cut. This ending scene rightly sums up, albeit in... Read More

By Archit Kumar The word ‘theatre’ takes one to a didactic imagery of a dilapidated building with an arch like staircase rising in the middle of the two aisles. Characters on stage dressed in rented attire from Sarojini Nagar, trying to emote through their loud voices... Read More

By Ruchika Chanana It’s difficult to tell the Kashmir story. We all know about the instability, the violence, and the conflict. We hear news reports that no longer mean much to us, inured as we are to terrorism and its fallout. But a couple of years ago, the discovery of mass... Read More

By Naman Govil Last week, the World lost one of its most celebrated and admired cinema lovers – Roger Ebert. He once said, “I was born inside the movie of my life. The visuals were before me, the audio surrounded me, the plot unfolded inevitably but not necessarily. I don’t... Read More

Among many amazing cultural events that were recently held in the capital, comes the revered and prestigious theatre festival, the Mahindra Excellence in Theatre Awards 2013 {META 2013}. Celebrating excellence in theatre and stage craft, the eighth edition of the fest continues... Read More

By Soumya Pande Robert Bresson is sometimes considered to be the patron saint of cinema. His ascetic and spiritual cinema warrants the adjective, divine; a religion unto itself. As per Godard, Bresson is to French cinema what Dostoevsky is to Russian literature and Mozart to... Read More

By Archit Kumar As you turn older, you have more and more questions that remain unanswered. I always wonder if there exists a tribe which doesn’t use the word ‘I’ as a symbol of pride. This simple word, ‘I’, has the strongest connotations sometimes; often delightful but never... Read More

By Kartik Mahajan You’ve been to an art exhibition. You may even have been to a video art installation or to an exhibition where you simply couldn’t understand why a blob of wax was being made such a fuss about. There are exhibitions for dog clothes, for flowers,... Read More

By Soumya Pande Somewhere in between Bhanu Athaiya’s Academy Award for Best Costume Design {Gandhi, 1982 with John Mollo} and the much recent ‘Slumdog’ coterie of Resul Pookutty, AR Rahman and Gulzar, lies the only other triumph of an Indian at the much coveted award ceremony,... Read More

By Ruchika Chanana It’s that time of year again. Except, it’s colder. But don’t let a tiny thing like 4.5 degrees centigrade stop you from venturing forth to take in one of Indian theatre’s biggest events: the Bharat Rang Mahotsav or the annual festival of the National School of... Read More

By Shourya “The Gunner” Pande A hundred years and still counting… Yeah, it’s been 100 years of Indian cinema, this year.  That’s way more than our independence, more than our constitution, and even older than our national flag.  Indian cinema has been giving us good times... Read More