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Manoj Mitra (1938-2024): Banchharam’s garden loses its creator, and Bengal a doyen of stage and screen 

His most enduring legacy is perhaps his role in Banchharamer Bagaan, considered one of the greatest performances in Bengali cinema.
Suhrid Sankar Chattopadhyay
Counter Culture

Rohit Shetty’s Singham Again is an epic cop-out

The movie, a forceful, joyless retracing of the Ramayana does a disservice to the very thing it purports to be in service of: the police force.
Prathyush Parasuraman
Book Review

Safdar Hashmi’s transformative approach to theatre as a democratic force

Through plays like Hatyare and Aurat, Hashmi tackled communalism and gender issues while building an inclusive, collaborative artistic practice.
A. Mangai
CINEMA

Could watching a movie change your political views?

Watching a docufilm about a wrongly convicted man boosted empathy towards incarcerated people, according to a new scientific study.
Deutsche Welle

More stories from Cinema

For over 100 years Charlie Chaplin has been a cultural icon. Though often imitated, there is only one Chaplin and his family wants to keep it that way.

Charlie Chaplin: Keeping a comedy genius in business

The Chaplin Office in Paris is the guardian of the film icon’s legacy. Decades after his death it is busier than ever.
Deutsche Welle
In this photograph taken in July 2013, then Congress leader Baba Siddique is flanked by actors Salman Khan and Shah Rukh Khan at an Iftar party in Mumbai.

Baba, Bollywood, Bishnoi: A Mumbai murder mystery

As the Assembly election approaches, a powerful ex-minister is gunned down for his “closeness” to a Bollywood superstar. Or was it a real estate feud?
Amey Tirodkar
Indira Gandhi in Delhi on April 20, 1982. Documentary film Indi(r)a’s Emergency covers events from the 1942 Quit India Movement through to the Emergency period.

Can a film be progressive if it is too subtle?

Circumventing censorship with minor tricks doesn’t make a film progressive; it merely turns the capacity to evoke pity into an artistic virtue.
Prathyush Parasuraman
Dharmendra. A still from Shalimar. 1978, silver gelatin print.

Mind’s eye: How O.P. Sharma’s pictorialist approach and innovative darkroom methods redefined photography

Sharma’s retrospective at Triveni Kala Sangam showcases a career that transformed photography from documentation to high art. 
Trisha Gupta
Kris Kristofferson performs on the Pyramid Stage at Worthy Farm in Somerset during the Glastonbury Festival in Britain, on June 23, 2017.

Kris Kristofferson (1936-2024): The Rhodes scholar who became Nashville’s rebel poet

Kristofferson’s dual career as a respected songwriter and Hollywood actor cemented his status as a cultural icon who lived life on his own terms.
Suhrid Sankar Chattopadhyay
Hindi cinema’s realism, its Tier 2 cinema, where a film titled Stree, or woman, can be made with male protagonists, is frail.

Bollywood’s shallow realism

Hindi cinema’s current embrace of realism isn’t inclusive. It shows the same power structures as before, just dressed up as middle-class stories.
Prathyush Parasuraman
The actor Kollam Thulasi addresses a dharna by film and television artistes demanding the implementation of the Justice Hema Committee report, in Thiruvananthapuram on September 4. Thulasi was in the news recently for revelations about the exploitation of female actors in the Malayalam film industry.

Hema Committee report can be a catalyst for structural change in Malayalam cinema

The report’s release could facilitate the overhaul of workplace practices and address long-standing issues concerning women in all film industries.
Thulasi K. Raj
The actor Sruthi Hariharan, with the actor Chetan Ahimsa and FIRE president Kavitha Lankesh, addressing the media in Bengaluru in October 2018. Sruthi’s allegations against the actor Arjun Sarja ground her career to a temporary halt.  

The conspiracy of silence in Tamil and Kannada film industries

Hardly innocent of sexual abuse, they now face pressure to reform as the Hema Committee report forces uncomfortable truths into the spotlight.
Subha J. Rao
Fans of the actor Prabhas celebrating his movie release in front a theatre in Khammam in August 2019.

Telugu cinema: A male stranglehold

A 2019 committee studied gender bias and sexual harassment in an industry controlled by patriarchal caste groups, but the report remains unpublished.
Ayesha Minhaz
The press conference by the Women in Cinema Collective in Kochi on October 13, 2018. It was a watershed movement in the feminist labour history of Kerala, where women forefronted themselves on the basis of their work. 

Lights, camera, litigation: Hema Committee report spotlights Malayalam cinema’s gender battleground

The precarity of women and other marginalised communities in Malayalam cinema reflects Kerala’s hierarchical, feudal, and patriarchal society.
Aparna Eswaran,Silpa Satheesh,Arathi P.M.

Editor’s Note: A powerful, defining moment

The Hema Committee Report shows there is hope that the omertà enforced by powerful men in the film industry will be broken.
Vaishna Roy
A protest by Mahila Congress workers against actors Mukesh and Siddique in Thiruvananthapuram on August 30. FIRs have been registered against many Malayalam film personalities after the Justice Hema Committee report revealed instances of sexual harassment of women in the industry. 

Pushing feminism’s frontiers in Kerala

From movie sets to courtrooms, educated women are transforming gender norms in Kerala, bringing to light the limits of institutional or state feminism
J. Devika
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