Mujib-The Making of a Nation, Review: How to fit three decades in three hours Sheikh Mujib-ur-Rehman, the tall, towering personality who was the single most important leader of East Pakistan, and largely responsible for the creation of BanglaDesh, served as President of his free country during 25 January 1975-15 August 1975, a period of only eight months. In an unfortunate co-incidence, he died on the Independence Day of India. Indian producer-director-actor I.S. Johar made a film called Joi ...

Prassthanam, Review: Loyalty, integrity and legacy, to see or not to see, that is the question When you have classics like the Mahabharat, Ramayan and Shakespeare’s works, why look elsewhere for inspiration? Update the setting and references but retain the blood and gore, conceit and deceit, loyalty and betrayal, vice and avarice, and above all, good and evil. You now have a story that every lover of mythology, every cinephile identifies with, and the figure could be well above a billio...

Life in Metaphors-Portraits of Girish Kasaravalli, by O.P. Srivastava: Well framed! A banker with a passion of cinema, Om Prakash Srivastava hung up his ATM to pursue his dream. In 2012, he attended a course in Film Appreciation at Goa, organised by the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), where an ex alumnus and India’s most decorated film-maker, Girish Kasaravalli was taking a master class on film-making. OP was so impressed with the demeanour and erudition of his teacher an...

France, Tunisia, China, Iran, Israel, Syria to be focus countries at RIFF 2019 The third and final list of films to be screened at the 5th Rajasthan International Film Festival was released yesterday by Somendra Harsh, the Founder of the festival. Overall, the festival will showcase 25 awarded films, from 10 different countries. Films like the Tunisian feature Benzine, directed by Sarah Abidi , the Zyang Yang directed Chinese feature, Paths of the Soul, Cheang Pu-soi directed Chinese feature...

Bose Dead or Alive: Rajkummar Rao in thriller take on Indian freedom fighter If you were a patriot and freedom seeker in the British colonial India of the 1920s-1940s, you either believed in non-violent struggle, a movement led by ‘Mahatma’ Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi or the increasingly violent approach of ‘Netaji’ Subhas Chandra Bose. Mahatma means great soul and Netaji translates as leader. Both belonged to the Congress party, but when Bose called for armed struggle,...

Siraj Syed interviews young film-maker Pratik Rajen Kothari *How many films have you made since your student days and what/who made it possible to make them? I have made three short films plus co-directed one before Hell O Hello. I also made some music videos. Almost all of these are zero/extremely low budget. At the start, people who are instrumental in making it possible are your like-minded friends. I have a very co-operative core team, without whom, I just wouldn't have had the coura...

by Siraj Syed It was through the thoughtfulness of a WhatsApp group member that I came to know about a Press Conference being organised on the 29th of September by Mumbai Academy of the Moving Image (MAMI) to announce the 18th Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival. MAMI is a trust that was formed 19 years ago, and the trustees included Hrishikesh Mukherjee, Shyam Benegal, Amol Palekar and Sudhir Mishra. The reins are now held by Kiran Rao, who is also Mrs. Aamir Khan and Anupama Chopra (journalist, a...

MFF 17, by Jio-MAMI, Festival Diary, I                                                                                                        (Coming up: Part II) It began in 1997, as the International Film Festival of Mumbai (IFFM). Som...