Chaani. V. Shantaram. 1977. If proof was needed that Sandhya...

Chaani. V. Shantaram. 1977.

If proof was needed that Sandhya was an original, you don’t need to look further than Chaani where her niece Ranjana Deshmukh in a blonde wig and blue contact lenses tries really hard to imitate her wild abandon, her screen presence- and fails spectacularly. Shantaram himself is nowhere near the top of his game. The tragic story of a mulatto child rejected by casteist rural India befriended by an upper caste boy, with music by hridayanath mangeshkar had possibilities perhaps but besides a few melodramatic stagings including the scene where our heroine is completely topless showing off her scars, the film is a bore.

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Life.. And nothing more. Abbas Kiorastami. 1992. Kiorastami...

Life.. And nothing more. Abbas Kiorastami. 1992.

Kiorastami proxy and his son search the ruins of a landscape destroyed by an earthquake for the actors from his earlier film ‘Where is the friends home?’ The landscape of devastated houses, crushed cars, relief work is seen almost entirely framed through the car window. Somewhere in the middle the couple stops over at a ruined village. Sudden fragments of natural beauty come with Vivaldi music.

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Khamoshi. Asit Sen. 1969. Within the sterility of the...

Khamoshi. Asit Sen. 1969.

Within the sterility of the modernist architecture of the hospital, a nonsensical ploy to cure patients of lovesickness by allowing a nurse to deceive them into romance, only to let them down later. Notwithstanding the plot, the staging is all cleansed white surfaces against which shadows sometimes fall through fluttering curtains. Through the window of the room, uniformed men and women walk like robots in distant corridors. The machine breaks down when the nurse falls into her own trap. She is punished for this by madness.

The songs: “humne dekhi hain pyaar ki…”, “woh shaam kuch ajeeb thi..” , “tum pukar lo ” are lovely.

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Last Train Home. Lixin Fan. 2009 Mining the same melancholic...

Last Train Home. Lixin Fan. 2009

Mining the same melancholic landscape of displaced and separated families in globalised China. The characters play out their roles in staged ways, saying things that fit easily with the stereotypes we expect even when the sudden outburst of the teenage girl takes place. The spaces are more evocative than the story even though they feel like they escaped from a Jia Zhang Ke film.

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Hirante Welandave A tropical modernism marked by floating roofs...

Hirante Welandave

A tropical modernism marked by floating roofs over masonry walls. The structure beautiful and elegant.

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Maki & Associates - Concept design for Amaravati Govt. Complex

Maki & Associates - Concept design for Amaravati Govt. Complex:

All cities are architecture, or are they? Watch all three presentations. The high modernist Master plan even though it may be clothed in the ‘mandala’, the elements stay the same- the central parks, the water bodies and that seductive surface of high modernist architecture. White boxes that gleam agains the green trees and reflect off the pools.

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Flower of blood. Mahesh Elkunchwar. 1971

<p>In the same year as ‘Shantata’. A madness of a woman after her son dies. Her obsession for the young boarder and her envy of the daughter’s youth and sexuality.</p>

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Shantata Court Chaalu Aahe. Satyadev Dubey. 1971. Her...

Shantata Court Chaalu Aahe. Satyadev Dubey. 1971.

Her sexuality frightens the system. She is made to pay when a novel inside a play inside the film begins to tell her story. she desperately tries to hold on to her dignity and freedom over her body as the light fades outside and inside. The noose of morality begins to tighten as middle class India accuses her that this is not what a woman is supposed to be. Guilt and pleasure intercut in the climactic scene. Sulabha Deshpande is incredible.

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Holi. Mahesh Elkunchwar. 1969

On young men and their fragile machismo. The only woman in the play is also played as masculine. The gay boy only has bribery, sycophancy and treachery as his weapons/ armour. He pays for his desire with his life.

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Anti. Rihanna. 2016 Jamaican dancehall meets American soul-pop...

Anti. Rihanna. 2016

Jamaican dancehall meets American soul-pop in a journey from the dance floor to the bedroom. From “Work” through “Love on the Brain”

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A Rag called Happiness. Nirmal Verma. 1979 Springtime Delhi...

A Rag called Happiness. Nirmal Verma. 1979

Springtime Delhi through a fever dream. A room in Nizamuddin with a terrace, a tomb and a view of the railway station that will take him back home to Allahabad, an office in Connaught Place where a bathtub will overflow with blood stained water, a house in Lutyens delhi with a darkened verandah and a forest of trees, an apartment on the third floor in north delhi where the perfect middle class family live. In a life on and off stage every surface is minutely probed for clues for what makes each person tick. But the performances are opaque.

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Probably the sexiest portrayal of a gay man in a mainstream...

Probably the sexiest portrayal of a gay man in a mainstream Hindi film. Fawad khan is great, so is Siddharth and I am in love with Alia.

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Sex and Fury. Noribumi Suzuki. 1973 Sexploitation pink film....

Sex and Fury. Noribumi Suzuki. 1973

Sexploitation pink film. Where else can you see a stark naked woman kill 15 men with a sword after they accost her having a bath; or where else can you see a revenge drama where she kills a man by coating her whole body with fragrant German poison that he then licks. And the deranged politics/business nexus plot is even sillier. Fun.

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Pinjra. 1972. V Shantaram It is the upper caste man’s...

Pinjra. 1972. V Shantaram

It is the upper caste man’s aspiration for purity that is the reason for his ultimate downfall. Confronted with a corrupt life as a sexual being he chooses instead purity in the ultimate abstraction- a ghost. Ideal. . Sandhya is more phenomenon than human- a perfect foil against which Shriram lagoo’s incredible transformation from moralistic prude to degenerate is played out- from the seduction of the bare thigh to the eventual melodrama of blood as sindoor. the music- and the dances- disala ga bai/ uchaki. Shantaram was a genius.

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From up on poppy hill. Goro Miyazaki. 2013 The wounds of war...

From up on poppy hill. Goro Miyazaki. 2013

The wounds of war leave a legacy of loss and the danger of incest. The only way to resolve them is through the loving restoration of the past- conservation projects; and conversations that ‘tell the truth’. All the difficult questions are coated in Studio Ghibli sweetness.

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Kamla. Vijay Tendulkar. 1981.

Kamla. Vijay Tendulkar. 1981.

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Burst City . Sogo Ishii. 1982. All...

Burst City

. Sogo Ishii. 1982.

All the conceits of edginess. Punk as performances imitating punk images elsewhere. Kinetic snarling twisted.

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Burst City. Sogo Ishii. 1982. All the conceits of rebellion....

Burst City. Sogo Ishii. 1982.
All the conceits of rebellion. Punk as performances imitating punk images elsewhere. Kinetic snarling twisted.

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The Gay Divorcee. Mark Sandrich. 1932 A string of a story upon...

The Gay Divorcee. Mark Sandrich. 1932
A string of a story upon which you can hang ‘Night and Day’ and a huge overblown production called 'The Continental’

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