At The Edge

Lala was a punk! This is one of the most illuminating things I have read in recent times. And yet, still doesn't explain why a book like Vikram Chandra's Sacred Games can be read in India but a film based on it cannot be made and screened in India without a lot of 'toning down' for Indian sensitivities. Forgot to add: Came across it at Digital Library here: Indian Cinematograph Committee (1927-28) vol. 1 , Indian Cinematograph Committee (1927-28) vol. 2 Aren't available in an easy to read pdf form there. So I took some parts of it and converted them to pdf. -0- While on the topic of cinema, information and crowd behavior: ironic,  Lala Lajpat Rai vs Babbu Maan -0-

From year 1979.  From year 1982. -0- At least , we could have picked a more interesting topic. How does NCERT deal with this topic? Maybe in another decade of so we will have public discussions on the issue. Of course, triggered by a controversy. Cartoon caricaturing Ambedkar's decision to resign from the Law Ministry over the failure to implement the Hindu Code Bill. Shankar's Weekly, October 7, 1951. From the book 'The Caste Question: Dalits and the Politics of Modern India' by Anupama Rao. Update: Funniest thing. I just realized that the caption 'Note the use of Hindu themes to represent what was, in fact, Ambedkar's challenge to Hindu hegemony.' is essentially wrong and it miss appropriates symbols. The obvious reference that Shankar was making in the cartoon was to an important scene in the story of Buddha, his renunciation....

The following verdict on present state of Indian film Industry is from 'Verdict on India' (1944) by  Beverley Nichols .  Hindu Hollywood LET us go to the pictures, and see an Indian film. It was the first thing I did, when I was well enough to hobble about again, and it would seem that no other Englishman has ever had such a wild idea before. 'What are Indian films like?' one used to ask. 'Good heavens, how should I know?' 'But haven't you ever seen one?' 'Seen one? An Indian film? Really!' Blank amazement greeted the suggestion that it might be interesting to see an Indian picture. And yet, the films are a living mirror of a nation's life; even if one did not understand everything that the mirror showed, it would surely repay a few hours of study. I was particularly anxious to visit the studios themselves, and after a little wire-pulling obtained permission to witness the shooting of a big historical picture which ...

Came across this gem by Mario in December 1, 1972 issue of Filmfare. This was part of the public  debate triggered by Khosla Committee Report (1968-1969). -0- For further study: this mind-altering rendition of Chintamani Bhatta's Suka Saptati or 'The Seventy tales of the Parrot' done by bollywood in 1985.

Fimfare 1-15 Oct 1981 Topic of discussion was Kalpana Iyer's bare back scene in Armaan(1981), a film about 'Liberation of Goa' (you see, I wasn't kidding, there is a co-relation between skin show in Indian Cinema and Goan liberation ). The article talked about what a 'bare back' meant generally in greater context of Indian culture and in lesser context to censorship in India. 2012-04-19 The news is about some bright people in Calcutta coloring posters in blue ink to cover a 'bare back' so that it becomes less obscene and less provocative . April 17, 2012 Good old Khushwant Singh wants to know  Why sexy films are ‘blue’… not red, yellow or green? and recounts catching one with Good old R.K. Narayan. The reason: "Comparing this notion of prudisness to the expression blue movie (i.e., pornographic films). the later one seems to entail quite an opposite meaning, but it is a metonymy as well, just having gone into a different direction...

It seems I and Mr. Bawaseer Kumar from Aonla are the only two people interested in this - Maneka Gandhi's Towel Ad. Bawaseer Kumar's interest is driven by curiosity about the colorful history of his Parliamentary representative (But I suspect his is a closet Nehru-Gandhi Clan hater just looking for ammunition - the proof, the ' dekha mainay kaha tha these Nehru/Gandhi's are sickular people' kind of proof). My interest, I am just vella . It is either all that or that nobody reads or rather cares for India Today anymore. The infamous 'deleted from history' ad was recently re-published in December 26, 2011, 'Makers & Breakers of Modern India' special issue of the magazine. Maneka Gandhi in DCM's 'Towels so good you want to wear them' campaign, 1973. Note with the ad reads: "This was justly Maneka Gandhi's, 22, first claim to fame. As an aspiring model, she had  signed up with DCM to model for their entire campaign of tow...

An ad from filmindia July, 1943. Came across above image in 'Wanted cultured ladies only!: female stardom and cinema in India, 1930s-1950s' by By Neepa Majumdar ( Google Books ) Leela Chitnis and Master Vinayak in ''Better Half' from filmindia, January 1940 The above image (minus the caption) was recently shared on twitter by Pavan Jha . He posted it as a quiz. Quite a few comments raised the issue of 'Smoking in Indian Cinema'. I came to know about the image via Facebook where someone asked me if I knew the answer. I recalled coming across it in filmindia collection shared with me by Greta . I was able to recall it because of the appealing caption: kiss The Kiss. Devika Rani and Himanshu Rai in Karma (1933) Speaking of Captions... From Filmfare, November 1989  Speaking of Ads... June 1982 -0-

Rita Ray  (1924-1983) was a regular cinephile, someone who certainly understood the art of it, someone who could interpret the things she saw on screen, someone who had strong views on cinema and what it ought to stand for. But her views underwent some drastic changes after she agreed to be on the advisory Panel of Censor Board. All of a sudden she found herself on the evil side, a side much cursed and secretly envied. Rita began to see things from the other side, the other side of the argument. Now she too asked herself the question, the rallying cry of that side, ‘What about the average person? Would he/she be able to handle it?’ At the same time she did wonder how to go about defining the ‘average’. She did note the rather unintentionally comic manner in which the serious business of Censoring was conducted. She took note of her fellow panelists, bored middle-aged women who had never seen a film in life, pretentious intellectuals who only wanted to be bothered abo...

Memsaab in a recent post about film Jaal (1967) asks: Is Biswajeet finally Cool? I think he always tried a bit too hard to be cool. The post made me reach out for my trash can  trash can and digg up this monstrosity. -0- The story goes like this: During the shooting of a film called Anjana Safar (1969) a newcomer named Rekha was slyly kissed by Biswajeet. The scene was captured on camera The film ran into censor troubles, took almost ten years to complete and was finally released as Do Shikari (1979). Meanwhile, the 'kiss scene' was apparently already famous because it made it to the cover of year 1969 Asian edition of Life Magazine, probably for the story 'India's Kissing Crisis' based on hysteria brought forth by release of Khosla Committee Report that claimed "kissing or nudity can't be banned unless a court of law judges it obscene." [ Outlook article from 2001 ]. “No court of law will hold that a kiss by itself, irrespective o...

Still of 'The Scene' Choti Bahu (Meena Kumari) summons Bhootnath (Guru Dutt), he must accompany her to a nearby shrine, she wants to pray for her paralytic husband who has now asked her to give up drinking. There might still be some hope. They get into a buggy and are on their way into the night. The camera focuses on two and in the background a song plays in the voice of  Hemant Kumar. Somewhere in the song a desolant Choti Bahu gently  puts her head in Bhootnath's lap, the audience suddenly goes ecstatic, there is much hooting, whistling, and catcalls. Minutes later, Choti Bahu is again murdered, this time by goons of her husband's elder brother. Scenes of  pandemonium are repeated by audiences in theaters all across the country while watching that scene in Sahib Bibi Aur Gulam (1962). They see something explicit in this scene from a film full of subtleties. An embarrassed director of the film,...