A man stands next to a poster of the movie ‘Article 370’ displayed at a theater in Guwahati, India. The movie is about the status of Jammu and Kashmir, a highly contested region in Northern India, and the film has been criticized for distorting history.
(AP Photo/Anupam Nath)
On today’s Don’t Call Me Resilient podcast, political scientist Sikata Banerjee and cinema studies scholar Rakesh Sengupta explain how cinema and social media in India may be helping to sway voters.
Netflix’s new series is about the scheming, menacing and murderous courtesans of Heeramandi. Here’s their real history.
A man walks past posters of the film ‘PM Narendra Modi,’ a biopic on the Indian prime minister, during its launch in Mumbai, India, in 2019.
AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool
Preminda Jacob, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Ahead of elections in India, a series of films that promote the ruling party’s right-wing ideology are seeking to influence voters. An art historian explains how the trend started.
A make-shift Hindu shrine to Durga, Ram and
Hanuman, in Mumbai.
Rainer Krack|Alamy
Urbanisation in India is causing Adivasi communities to lose connections to ancestral lands – and to traditional knowledge and belief systems. Urban Hinduisation plays a big role in this.
Taapsee Pannu and Shah Rukh Khan take the donkey route.
TCD/Prod.DB / Jio Studios
Despite portraying sex workers as agents of social change, Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s ‘Gangubai Kathiawadi’ presents sex workers as worthy victims because they didn’t choose their disreputable fates.
Tamil cinema’s breakup songs favour men. Here Dhanush consoles Sivakarthikeyan in the 2013 film ‘Ethir Neechal’ (‘Swimming Against the Tide’).
(Wunderbar Films)
‘Soup songs,’ a genre of Tamil breakup songs, refer to a man’s emotional state after being dumped and are full of blame for women. A more nuanced approach to love would be better for everyone.
A new Bollywood movie based on the story of an Indian entrepreneur who created affordable sanitary pads is helping to counter myths and taboos around menstruation.
In 1913, an Indian literary giant named Rabindranath Tagore was the first non-white person to win the literature prize. He wrote over 2,000 songs and, like Dylan’s, they still resonate today.
Audrey Hepburn and George Peppard get it on in Breakfast at Tiffany’s.
a.heart.17/flickr
A gesture of desire, sexuality and the erotic, the screen kiss has often been subject to censorship and controversy. But for directors game to bend the rules, the kiss can be a subversive act.
A R Rahman performing during the 83rd Academy Awards.
REUTERS/Gary Hershorn
It’s 101 years since the birth of Bollywood, the world’s largest and most vibrant movie industry and, of course, that’s more than enough time to mature and alter, to grow arms and legs. For some time…