HISTORY Grit and gumption: Annie Besant and the Indian freedom movementVidyarthy ChatterjeeAn assessment of Annie Besant’s (1847-1933) role in the Indian freedom movement on the 175th anniversary of her birth.
CINEMA Chilean documentary films: Records of resistanceVIDYARTHY CHATTERJEEAs Chile looks forward to a hopeful future under the recently elected socialist President Gabriel Boric, a review of the large body of films that has
TRIBUTE Henry Derozio: Early iconoclast Vidyarthy ChatterjeeA freethinker par excellence, Henry Louis Vivian Derozio’s alleged notoriety lay in his incessant exhortations to his students to cease conforming t
DOCUMENTARIES Satyajit Ray's documentaries: A mixed bagVidyarthy ChatterjeeWhen it came to documentaries, with the exception of The Inner Eye on the blind painting genius Benode Behari Mukhopadhyay, Satyajit Ray did not scale
Story of a silent era pioneer Maya Roy: Forgotten star of silent eraVidyarthy ChatterjeeDebiprosad Ghosh’s painstaking research pieces together the writings of Maya Roy, an actor of the silent movie era who did groundbreaking work as a
CINEMA Of genocide and liberation: the works of Tareque MasudVidyarthy ChatterjeeTareque Masud introduced the new generation of Bangladeshis to the freedom struggle through his Muktir Gaan, Muktir Kotha and Matir Moina, films that
CINEMA Revisiting Mrinal Sen’s "Calcutta ’71" Vidyarthy ChatterjeeMrinal Sen’s provocative reaction to the spectre of hunger, Calcutta ’71, turns 50. This work of the master film-maker deserves to be seen, studie
TRIBUTE: MANNA DEY Haunting melodiesPARTHA CHATTERJEEManna Dey, the 2007 Dada Saheb Phalke Award winner, has enthralled discerning listeners since the 1950s. (Published in the issue dated November 6, 200
John Desmond Bernal Scientist as revolutionaryS. CHATTERJEEThe life of J.D. Bernal is a testimony to the commitment that a scientist must use his knowledge and technique only for human welfare. (Published in t
TRIBUTE Sumitra Bhave: A quiet rebel VIDYARTHY CHATTERJEESumitra Bhave’s (1943-2021) Marathi films were important signposts for expressing popular disquiet in a strikingly restrained language.
Commemoration Remembering Engels’ thoughts on science and socialism on his bicentenaryS. ChatterjeeWhile studying capitalism, Engels studied science and history of science. The most comprehensive summary of his views on science can be found in Socia
Hari Vasudevan A scholar and a gentleman Choi Chatterjee The Kolkata-based historian of Russian studies Hari Vasudevan (1952-2020) was a guru who gave his students the greatest of all gifts, the gift of inte
Are Hindi films problematising history? After Padmaavat, the Hindu historical tasted blood and sharpened its fangs, but the recent Samrat Prithviraj is a weak offspring of the genre, neither
SlideshowPostcards from Khasi hillsImages that mix politics, history and discomfort to document how the Khasi people made Christianity, a “foreign faith”, their own.
