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friends im now on IG :)

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Inquilaab (1984)

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Is Raat Ki Subah Nahin (1996)

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Did Madhu Chakrabarty do any more movies ?

not to my knowledge unfortunately

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Uphaar (1971)

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Dastaan (1972)

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Women are fading out from Bollywood music

One in every two Bollywood songs are just sung by men

Though many activities in Indian public life have been dominated by men, there is one where women have led the way – playback singing in Bollywood music. Yet in recent years, even that has changed: the melodious voices you hear in the top movies have become increasingly male.

By Gurman Bhatia (March 2018)

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AHLUWALIA: [...] By that point this whole globalization thing was happening with call centers. India was being seen as the next big thing. I thought, “That’s weird because as far as I can see these guys have pretty horrible jobs, fourteen, fifteen hours all night.” And I am reading this very excited, enthusiastic, business press talking about all these people that are going to be liberated by capitalism. I just thought it sounds like a bad dystopian sci-fi. It sounds like all the Hollywood sci-fi I loved as a kid. So I started working on that. And that was much easier to get funding for. Although it was supposed to be about call centers it became more about the psychology of what it means to be a fake American and what does it mean for all of us to become fake Americans?

MAZUMDAR: John and Jane is a documentary, Miss Lovely is a fictionalized narrative yet in John and Jane you use enactment. In Miss Lovely your aesthetic is primarily driven by a documentary that could not be. Could you say something about the tension between documentary and fiction? 

AHLUWALIA: When I wanted to make John and Jane it had the shadow of a 1970s sci-fi film. I said, “What if I made a film which was science-fiction but it’s now, and you use real people to play themselves?” And I wanted to shoot it on celluloid—which meant I had very limited footage. It couldn’t be a cinema verité documentary. It had to be very scripted. The cameraman was like, “It’s like you’re shooting this like Nanook of the North or something.” It’s really old school with a big 35 camera, it’s not “fly on the wall” at all, it’s all composed, it’s all static shots. For me that was interesting: what makes something a documentary, is it just the form? Like, if it’s a hand held digital camera then it’s a documentary but if I shoot it beautifully composed on 35, then it’s suddenly fiction.

-- "An Interview with Ashim Ahluwalia" in BioScope: South Asian Screen Studies vol 7, no. 2 (2016).

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Sridevi in Vazhve Mayam (1982)

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ISSUE DATE: February 28, 1977

"Being a woman is a terrible disadvantage in the film business. If you talk to people about work, they think it absurd that you should want to direct films."

This is the considered opinion of Shama Zaidi, one of the few women who has, in fact, been involved in film-making for the past seven years. "The problem," she continues, "is mainly prejudice - a prejudice above which even women find it difficult to rise. When my husband, M.S. Sathyu, made Garam Hawa, for instance, I was involved in every area of the film. Officially, of course, I only wrote the story (together with Kaifi Azmi and Ismat Chugtai), the screenplay (with Kaifi Sahib), the script (on my own) and designed the costumes. But, in fact, I worked on every aspect of the film, including direction. Now, if I'd been a man, I would have made the film on my own instead of working with and through Sathyu. It didn't occur to me at the time to do anything else-I just considered myself as a part of him."

But when she began thinking of herself as a separate person, at least professionally, the prejudice continually stood in her way. People would say things like, "it's too difficult for you, why attempt it at all?"

"There is a practical problem too. If you are negotiating finances for a film you have to attend parties and meet all kinds of people at all kinds of hours. I wouldn't, for instance, be able to go and drink with a potential producer at midnight in the Sun 'n Sand bar without it being misunderstood. Yet, a man can do so without any aspersions being cast on him ..."

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Shaque (1976)

[mizoguchi]

[Mrinal Sen] visited Cannes many times, both to show his films, as well as a member of the jury, and he always came back energized and inspired. One friendship that he particularly cherished was formed while he served in the Cannes jury in 1982. Gabriel Garcia Marquez was also a member of the jury that year, and they formed a very close bond. Later, they spent an extended time at a film school in Havana. In 1982, he came back from Cannes with a copy of One Hundred Years of Solitude. Later that year, on October 21 (I remember the date because it was my birthday) we came to know that Marquez had won the Nobel Prize in literature!

Kunal Sen, Mrinal Sen’s son

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Every single country where feminist publishing began, began with the movement. It came out of the movement. It didn’t come out of the mainstream publishing environment at all. It came out of a political context--a political context in which the women’s movement was very significant. But each of those publishing houses had a very different genesis. It’s not as though every single publishing house was sui generis the way we were. That it was just two women who set up and had no backing and no fronting either. Two women--always two women. That’s another thing--almost always two women. It’s always been collaborative. 

The Books We Made (Anupama Chandra & Uma Tanuku, 2015)

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Hi! Greetings from Mexico. Dear Dhrupad, Who's the women on pic?

hello! it is the actress suhasini mulay in a still from the film aparoopa (1982)

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Hey, it's been a while since your last post! Hope you're ok!

i am! thank you for checking in :) <3

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Tere Ghar Ke Samne (1963)

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आरती Aarti (1962)