The Journal
Essays & Dispatches
Long reads on the films, filmmakers and movements of meaningful Indian cinema.
Albert Pinto Ko Gussa Kyoon Aata Hai? (1980)
Albert Pinto Ko Gussa Kyoon Aata Hai? – is Saeed Akhtar Mirza’s 1980 study of a Bombay garage mechanic, played by Naseeruddin Shah, whose scorn for striking mill workers turns into class awareness once the mill owners’ hired men put his father in bandages.
Agraharathil Kazhuthai (1977)
Agraharathil Kazhuthai is John Abraham’s 1977 Tamil film, the only one he made in that language, follows a donkey adopted by a Brahmin professor, stoned to death by his village on a false charge and then worshipped as a deity, and closes with the funeral fire burning the settlement to the ground.
Apur Sansar (1959)
Apur Sansar (1959) is Satyajit Ray’s conclusion to the Apu Trilogy that takes a Calcutta writer through an accidental marriage, his wife’s death in childbirth and the years he spends away from his son, and ends with a return that it refuses to call a redemption.
Aparajito (1956)
The second film of Satyajit Ray’s Apu Trilogy follows a Brahmin boy from the ghats of Varanasi to a Calcutta printing press, tracing the cost his education exacts on the mother he leaves behind.
15 Park Avenue (2005)
15 Park Avenue (2005) is Aparna Sen’s English-language film about a young woman with schizophrenia who inhabits a private reality centered on a home and family that don’t exist, and the older half-sister who devotedly cares for her, a compassionate exploration of mental illness, perception, and the boundaries of what we call real.
Tamas (1988)
Tamas (1988) is a made for television film written and directed by Govind Nihalani. Based on a Hindi novel of the same name by Bhisham Sahni, Tamas is set in the backdrop of a small town in the now Pakistani Punjab during the partition of India in 1947.
Mondo Meyer Upakhyan (2002)
Mondo Meyer Upakhyan (2002), also released as A Tale of a Naughty Girl, is a Bengali drama by Buddhadev Dasgupta about a fourteen-year-old girl who defies her mother’s plan to sell her into prostitution in favour of returning to school.