Films from the Global South (such as that of Latin America, Asia and Africa) seldom receive the kind of acceptance the Anglo-American English movies get across the world. The international film festivals may be an exception where the ‘best’ from such countries is recognised, and it is here that some enthusiastic cinephiles get an opportunity to experience these movies. But[Read More...]
“He wears a mask and his face grows to fit it.” – George Orwell, “Shooting an Elephant” The lobby of the temple of time travel called the Triplex Cinema in Great Barrington, Massachusetts was suffused with a nostalgic vibe tinged with the whiff of encroaching death when I walked in for The Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story. I[Read More...]
21 Jun 2019: Celebrating World Music Day These days internet can open up fascinating treasure-troves from the half-forgotten past. In a French archive one can watch a short documentary- “Nous Sommes Deux”, made almost 50 years ago by Robert Manthoulis for the French television. The title – “We are two” (in Greek, “Imaste dio”) is the first line of a[Read More...]
“Obey me or die!” the orange-haired man threatens the world. “My drones know you’re home, and my missiles don’t miss. I’m Commander in Chief, CinC for short. I’ll sink you into the sea, fry you crisp, burn you to dust with the push of a button. I’ll overthrow your governments, strangle your economies, jail your refugees. I’m the trumpet of[Read More...]
“Tales Of A City By The Sea” by Gaza-born, Palestinian Australian playwright and poet, Samah Sabawi, is a simple but powerful play about the realities of life and love in the Gaza Concentration Camp that is ruled with an iron fist by Apartheid Israel. However fundamentally the play is about those who have choices and those who do not. Specifically[Read More...]
Hobsbawms’s posthumous collection of essays, ‘Fractured Times- Culture and Society in the Twentieth Century’(2013), is a tour de force of cultural history Eric Hobsbawm ( 9 June, 1917 – 1 October, 2012) In the preface to Fractured Times he wrote just days before his death, Eric Hobsbawm put his future reader on notice that it was going to be[Read More...]
They all called him Chotu. How and why the name came to stick, even he didn’t know. He wasn’t short. As an Indian, he was average in height. But he wasn’t an Indian, or was he? Well, even that wasn’t clear to him. The other day, the fat clerk at the aadhar office had refused to give a form because[Read More...]
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Your eyes are the mystery you have willed them to be. From a distance, they are a breeze Bearing the scent of sandalwood, of ginger, Salty sea lather roasting in an oriental sun. When viewed directly, One sees the colors of a spice market Haloed in blue. Your lips were formed in Russian forests, Kept moist by the same[Read More...]
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I have been pondering lately the significance of two elder visionaries who have exerted a lasting influence on me – Noam Chomsky (90) and Bob Dylan (77) – the former because he is an intellectual ‘rock of Gibraltar’ now in his ninth decade, and the latter because I recently saw the Nobel Laureate perform in concert more than half a[Read More...]
you won’t leave me but you won’t love me just the same you will be there yet not there in the mediocrity of life we will live procreate and finish no ecstasies no abysses no heights of bliss no depths of despair we shall amble along life’s well trodden path walking in the footsteps of all those who lived and[Read More...]
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