Throughout its long general election campaign India presented itself as ‘the world’s biggest democracy’, consolidating the sense of the Union of India – and that’s how most of us outside the country recognise its identity. But in reality India is not only a physical area the size of 20 European states with three times the population, but also with … Continue reading
Vicky Donor is a successful example of the ‘New Bollywood’ trend. With a relatively small budget and an ‘edgy’ theme it pleased both critics and popular audiences and became a hit. Produced by the Bollywood star John Abraham, it is the work of the pairing of writer Juhi Chaturvedi and director Shoojit Sircar, the latter … Continue reading
I only see the occasional mainstream Bollywood film on release, but I try to keep up with how the industry is changing so I joined four other brave souls for a lunchtime screening of the latest film to star the ‘Big B’, Amitabh Bachchan. I knew little about the director Prakash Jha except that he … Continue reading
Bombay Talkies is a portmanteau film celebrating 100 Years of Indian Cinema and featuring four short films by leading Indian directors. The film led the Indian presence at Cannes this year and as it has been widely discussed in the trades and festival reports I was keen to see it. I enjoyed all four short … Continue reading
Here’s India’s biggest film of the year so far, a Karan Johar production no less. The Hindi title translates as ‘This Youth Is Crazy’ – not really very helpful as a title as the film is bang-centre mainstream and conventional. I decided to see it partly because I’ve been impressed by two of the leads, … Continue reading
The second of Bradford’s presentation of some of the landmark films of Indian cinema, Mughal-e-Azam, is a little easier to write about than Kalpana, but only because it conforms to aspects of Hindi popular cinema. As a production it is out on its own. The print we watched on Pictureville Cinema’s big screen was the … Continue reading
