The Dada Saheb Phalke Award for 2006 for cine maestro Tapan Sinha, has come as the crowning glory to a vast and diverse repertoire of films that have won acclaim in India and around the world including 19 National Awards and recognitions in international film festivals in Berlin, Venice, London, Moscow, San Francisco and Locarno among others.
If one were to wonder what makes Tapan Sinha’s films a cut above the rest, it is their sheer simplicity and innocuous manner of storytelling…

Fans of the late Ingmar Bergman will now get a chance to view a selection of seven of the master’s works in a Bergman retrospective, titled “Remembering Bergman” spanning 6 cities in India, marking the first anniversary of the renowned director’s demise. Bergman is best known for such unforgettable classics like Wild Strawberries, Through a Glass Darkly (which won the best foreign film Oscar in 1961), The Seventh Seal and Fanny and Alexander. All these movies were meditations on life, death and the meaning of our existence. Viewers will be able to experience some of these films in the upcoming festival.

Bergman was quintessentially a phenomenon by himself. His life, his actions remained unparalleled over the years. Though unbearable at times, the mastermind left a deep impact on human kind, thus, making it practically unimaginable to be ignored. No session of film studies, film criticism, can be completed until he is discussed again and again. Born in July 14th, 1918 to a priest, he started taking interest in theatre as a student of University of Stockholm. He wrote several screenplays including Frenzy for Director Sjoberg in 1944 followed by the “Devil’s Prison” in 1949 …

Few directors have left such a mark on Indian cinema as Bimal Roy. His contemporary, Ritwik Ghatak, himself celebrated as one of the supreme masters of cinema, has written that he worshipped Bimalda (as he was popularly known), and recent works of Hindi cinema, such as the remade version of Devdas (with Shah Rukh Khan) and Lagaan (with Amir Khan) bear testimony to the enduring influence of Bimal Roy’s work. His name is indelibly linked to some of the masterpieces of Indian cinema, including Do Bigha Zameen (1953), Parineeta (1953), Madhumati (1958), Sujata (1959), and Bandini (1963).

When Shakespeare wrote, “All the world’s a stage,” I’m sure he didn’t expect a man called Federico Fellini to interpret it four centuries later as “All the world’s a circus”. One of the greatest filmmakers of all times, Fellini pretty much saw the world as a circus, at least in his films. La Dolce Vita reveals the circus of the rich and the paparazzi, 8 ½ explores the circus of filmmaking, E La Nave Va shows the circus of opera, aristocracy and journalism, La Strada depicts the circus behind a circus while Fellini Satyricon is a circus in itself. And honestly, you can’t blame him. Isn’t life a circus full of impromptu performances anyway? Fellini’s greatest fascinations, since childhood, were the circus and vaudeville artists…

Would they lose their individuality with greater funding? Would the quality of their productions deteriorate with a wealth or riches? I doubt it. In fact, one can only hope that their sweep of the recent Oscars ceremony encourages the backers in the film industry to put more faith in artsy filmmakers like these two brothers. […]

Ah, the joy of watching a Rivette film is pure exultation for the senses.

But contrary to what might be construed, most of Rivette’s works have a very raw nature to it - kind of like a strange distant quality, as not in the plot, per se, but more in the mise-en-scene, which makes one initially uncomfortable about Rivette, but, not long, finding delectation for his methods. To qualify the distant aspect with being surrealist (an exception, one might say, being “Céline et Julie vont en bateau”), per se, or Dogma95-ish would be going off the track. Rivette’s films are like reading a novel chaptered into distinct plots intangibly shaping out like an undulating curve - you are “in” the plot but the discreteness is felt.