FL18BALACHANDERTAMIL

The KB school

AN hour-long discussion on his films, many of which defied established social norms and customs of the middle class, brought to the fore the c

Ilangovan Rajasekaran

Cinema's century

Contemplating a century

Mainstream Indian cinema’s hundred year spree makes for a pulsating narrative. Though it has gone from selling dreams in the initial days to commodify

In first person: M. Karunanidhi

Cinema for a cause

THE topic “Tamil cinema in the past 100 years” takes me back 70 years to an era of transition from “silent films” to “talkies”. The “silent films”, in

In first person: Balu Mahendra

‘Cinematography has changed, so also the way films are made’

I graduated in cinematography from the Film Institute in Pune in 1969 with a gold medal. While we were at the institute, we were exposed to a lot of w

Dream merchants

The convergence of brand culture, television and stardom has forever changed the profile of the Indian film star, generating new sites for the product

In first person: Sabitri Chatterjee

Nostalgic about a bygone era

I GOT into the entertainment business when I was a small child. After Partition, my parents and I moved to Kolkata, and here we lived in dire poverty,

In first person: Akkineni Nageswara Rao

The long journey from Gudivada

I GUESS I am probably one of those few people who really took the plunge into performing arts in order to get out of poverty. It goes without saying t

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Samik Bandopadhyay film analyst and Vice Chairman of National School of Drama during an interaction in Hyderabad on August 15, 2006.
Photo: K. Gajendran

Centenary and selective memory

WHAT I find Indian is in the “regional” cinemas of India. For instance, they go into the history of that region, language or culture closely and try t

HYDERABAD, 12-04-2013: D.Rama Naidu, Guiness Record holder in producing over 130 films and Dada Saheb Phalke Awardee.
Photo:PV.Sivakumar

‘Telugu industry a force to reckon with’

I WANTED to be a farmer, and for a while I did just that, apart from running a rice mill and even operating a few buses. Not content with the work bac

Nageswara Rao in the film Devadas.

In search of new narratives

As differentiation between genres began to get blurred in the early 1970s, the star and his relation to the fan became the sole aesthetic preoccupatio

VENKATESH CHAKRAVARTHY

Arghyakamal Mitra (3) at work in his office at his residence - pic. by Suhrid Sankar Chattopadhyay

‘We just keep up with the West’

Technically, I definitely feel that Indian cinema has taken a great leap. Whatever developments have been taking place globally, India has somehow kep

Noted Telugu film director K. Viswanath, during an interaction on his new movie 'Swarabhishekam' at the Music World store which celebrated its fifth anniversary in Hyderabad on October 30, 2004.
Photo: K. Gajendran

‘Change cannot be at the cost of values’

EVERY time a mediaperson meets me, his/her first question is: “What makes your films so everlasting?” My reply is almost always the same: chemistry is