Culture
Selfies Can’t Capture Indian Streets
Modern day photography is digital and is available at a single click of the button. Almost every magazine or journal is available online. The posters and photographs in the magazines of the yesteryear are long gone out of fervour. They still manage to have a following, so do the photo stories in the newspapers and […]
Does Germany indeed welcome you?
To watch Almanya : Willkommen in Deutschland is quite fitting in this time. In translation, it is ‘welcome to Germany.’ We wake up every morning to the gory news reports about Syria and the nightmarish reveries of people dying in droves. Juxtaposed with this is Pope Francis’ benevolent appeal to Christendom to open its gates for refugees […]
Hip-Hop: A Culture That Transcends Songs
Say Yo! Wear a hip hop cap, bling it up with diamond earrings and garland a gold chain or two around your neck, then sport a loose T-shirt that almost hugs your knees. Round it off with a collection of bright ankle length shoes for everyday of the week. And hey, there’s hip hop for […]
A Black Friday in Bombay: Film Review
A critical appraisal of Anurag Kashyap’s Black Friday (2007) in the aftermath of Yaqoob Memon’s execution for his alleged involvement in the Bombay blasts, which the film purports to narrate. An adaptation of the book by author/journalist S. Hussain Zaidi, Black Friday, released in 2007 took three years to see the light of day. It […]
Fasting: Is it abstention or Starving?
I have been witness to a conversation passed off between two train passengers who so shrewdly modulated their voice as to be overheard. Here is my attempt not to be fictitious in its reproduction. A: your Ramadan fasting is around the corner. And you are going to starve us Hindoos, aren’t you? B: why starve […]
When Art Explores the World’s Mysteries
MUHAMMED NOUSHAD reviews the recently concluded Kochi-Muziris Biennale. Art opens a door: to the infinities of universe, to the obscurities of human innerness, to the possibilities of another world. Sometimes a spiritual ascension. An unexpected prophetic rescue from the imminent descent into the cave of evilness. Existing or nonexistent. Realistic or surrealistic. Standing before certain […]
Is this the end of Iranian cinema?
I have had occasions to reflect on the fate of what we can now call a post-national cinema, a proposition not so outlandish in the heightened age of transnational globalisation. The idea is based on a conception of national cinemas, or any other national cultural movement, as predicated on national traumas. The leading Iranian film-maker […]
Prophet’s Childhood: Majidi’s Take the Talk of Tinseltown
The cinema world is waiting with bated breath to see MajidMajidi’s take on the Prophet Muhammad’s eventful life. The film had hogged limelight mainly for two reasons: first, the focus of his film is on the Prophet’s childhood; so it would be the first attempt to bring the childhood of the Prophet on screen. Also, […]
Big Screen 2014
Interstellar, Christopher Nolan Christopher Nolan is a name synonymous with super-realism or sci-fi surrealism. The Nolanisation of cinema was inaugurated by his Inception,a film about dreams and a dystopian condition in which dreams could be manipulated. The gloomy streets of Gotham-a bridge between the fantastical and the commonplace-are now grounds of countless fancies within the […]
Mercan Dede says he’s like a vagabond reed flute
DJ Arkın Allen, aka Mercan Dede, is back in the limelight with a new album following a six-year break since his last studio release. Released this month via Onearth Records, “Dünya” (Earth) is the newest offering from the 47-year-old musician, born Arkın Ilıcalı in 1966 in Bursa, and known in Turkey and around the world […]
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