let us discuss INDIAN CINIMAH

[bloodyjack]

here is a thread where all of you guys can relax and knock back a few cold ones while discussing the state of Indian cinema because it has so many problems aside from the mindless escapism, sordid love triangles, outsourcing, hilarious dots on women's foreheads, and cheesecake choreography. the actual PROBLEM with these PROBLEMS is that the unwashed masses of INDIA eat this stuff up. clearly there is nothing to be done about this but I don't really think anybody will care if I clutter up the Lounge at this hour (not that it matters! HaHA)

Since I am loath to use that term which must not be used, no one else must use it either. (BOLLYWOOD)

so it goes: who are your favorite directors? what are your favorite movies?

note to those kind souls who respond to this thread: please disclude any movies that were released in the past thirty years, as they all suck.

thnx

[tuvor]

1. I guess we won't be talking about Aishwarya Rai, then.

Damn.

[bloodyjack]

3. I have never seen her in a movie

to me, she is purely an internet phenomenon

feel free to discuss her all you want, though.

[ReadTomPaine]

2. Loved Muthu

[Tom Kitten]

4. weird coincidence...

Today I went to the used music and video store and picked up an Indian video for a dollar called Lekin...It came out in 1990 and I know nothing about it whatsoever...except the box says it was directed by a certain Mr. Gulzar.

The only Indian films I've seen are by Satyijat Ray (Devi, the Apu Trilogy, Distant Thunder, a few others) and of course he was the classic director...

[John Dark]

6. Weird coincidence is right

countfloyd, it turns out my favorite Satyajit Ray movies are exactly the same ones you named. Great minds think alike. Did you catch any of the Satyajit Ray retrospective with new prints that came out in the '90s? It was a rare opportunity to see these on the big screen.

[Tom Kitten]

8. Not the retrospective but

All of the movies I saw by him were on the big screen. When I went to the U of Oregon in the late 70s/early 80s, there were two fabulous art house theatres in Eugene. In fact, Devi was the first foreign subtitled movie I ever saw, it played first as a doublefeature along with Mizoguchi's Sansho the Bailiff. Seeing those movies changed my life! I immediately started taking film studies classes and for a while declared film studies as my major...I was really into it, in fact the only class I got an A+ in my whole college career was History of the Motion Picture...

Those were the days, both theatres are long gone now...
But taking classes gave me an opportunity to see dozens of films on the big screen in the big lecture halls, not the optimum mode for viewing (plus we had to take notes, writing in the dark was always fun) but better than watching them on tv...Plus the UO would show films on campus on the weekends, charging a buck, that was how I saw Distant Thunder (It was still a recent film when I saw it)

I do have the restored vhs tapes of the Apu Trilogy, I got them on ebay, and would love to find a dvd or restored vhs of Devi, the woman who played her was mesmerizingly beautiful!

[John Dark]

12. Sharmila Tagore

I so totally agree with you. Ever since I saw Devi at the Smithsonian's Indian movie series several years ago, I have believed that the most beautiful woman ever seen on earth was Sharmila Tagore in the lead role. She was so breathtakingly, mindbogglingly beautiful in that movie that I could totally understand falling down at her feet and worshiping her as an avatar of the Goddess. I know I would have if I had been on the set at the time!

Devi was her second movie (her first was The World of Apu). She was 17 years old when she starred in Devi. She is the great-granddaughter of the Nobel prizewinning poet Rabindranath Tagore. Ray gave her a start in movies, and she went on to a Bollywood career in the '60s, although she came back as an adult a few years later in Ray's Days and Nights in the Forest. She still acts once in a while (you might have seen her as the mom in Mississippi Masala).

[John Dark]

5. There's tons of excellent Indian cinema

Once you leave Bollywood aside, there's a wealth of wonderful world-class Indian cinema that can stand alongside any movies from anywhere in the world, if not better.

Exhibit A: Satyajit Ray. His Apu Trilogy, Teen Kanya, Devi, and Distant Thunder are just a few of my standout favorites from his unparalleled oeuvre.

I'm quite fond of the 1985 movie Mirch Masala (released in America with the title "Spices"). It had a song and dance number, but unlike Bollywood it was totally integrated into the rest of the movie. It took place in a Gujarati village where the villagers danced a traditional folk dance in a circle and sang as part of their normal culture, with the music only what you would hear in an actual village, just drums and voices. Very un-Bollywood.

My Indian movie guilty pleasure: Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love. I will not apologize for liking this beautiful movie.

[John Dark]

7. Check out the regional Indian cinemas, especially Tamil

The regional cinema unfortunately too often gets ignored because of the behemoth that rules B-town. Studying the Tamil language, I watched as many Tamil movies as I could, and you know there's some good ones out that follow their own ideas and don't imitate the Bollywood formula.

A couple years ago, the Tamil movie Bharati was released, a biopic about the greatest Tamil poet, Subramaniya Bharati (1882-1921). All the songs were of his poems, naturally. The movie focused on his renown as A) a freedom struggler for Indian independence and B) a campaigner for abolition of caste. A renegade Brahmin, he outraged the other Brahmins by initiating lower-caste Indians with the sacred thread ceremony. Bharati was also a multifaceted artist and thinker; the movie left out his promotion of inter-religious harmony between Hindus, Muslims, and Christians; his bold campaign for feminism; and his deep devotion to the Goddess. It was his feminist and Goddess poetry and activism that got me interested in him in the first place.

The Tamil movies technically do not have the slick production values seen in Bollywood. But they have something better: more interesting scripts and ideas.

[silverpatronus]

9. kama sutra is GORGEOUSLY made...

as is one of my relatively new faves, monsoon wedding.

mississippi massala wasn't bad either...

i'm from trinidad, where bollywood is king, so we get TONS of it. it's good for a laugh. we made an 'indian' movie, me and a few friends once (we were sloshed and had a camera). the funniest part was when my friends liz and anton chased each other around the big tree on the main yard on campus. the rest of us just about died laughing.

[bloodyjack]

11. The Bengali movie industry can on occasion produce something great

Of course I may just like listening to them talk LOLOLOLOLOLOLL

Also, as far as Hindi flicks go, you have to dig back a few decades before the Bollywood formula had been established & carved into stone.

So, um, exhibit B: Guru Dutt. Dabbled in film noir and a lot of stuff I haven't had a chance to see, directed one AMAZING movie (Pyaasa or "Thirst") and one slightly-less-AMAZING movie (Kaagaz Ke Phool or "Paper Bouquet") and was found dead five years later.

They don't make Hindi movie songwriters like they used to, either. Fo shizzle. :(

[corporatemedia]

10. Best Indian movie ever made - "Gunga Din" (1939) Best Indian Actors...

Sam Jaffe as Gunga Din
Eduardo Ciannelli as the Guru
and of course
Jerry Mathers as the Beaver