Most of Yash Chopra’s iconic films, including Deewaar, Kabhi Kabhie and Silsila were shot by the prolific Kay Gee
Amborish Roychoudhury
Editor
‘Dostojee’, after having a successful run in its native West Bengal and a short but impactful release in several Indian cities, ventured to North America, the Middle East, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. ‘Dostojee’, a small, intimate story about two friends, also became the first Bengali film to make it to Times Square.
The translation of the vision of a director into celluloid depends a lot on the craftsman holding the camera
Pankaj Kapur went on to feature in various roles which not only challenged his histrionic abilities, but introduced discerning audiences to whole new experiences. And yet, he is perhaps not as celebrated as contemporaries like Om Puri, Naseeruddin Shah, Smita Patil and Shabana Azmi.
There was a time when Kolkata — then known as Calcutta — was the heart of the Indian cinema industry, churning out stars and blockbusters of a scale the country had never seen before. And behind all of this was the dogged persistence of one man, a portly Bengali?'bhadralok'?named Birendranath Sarkar.?
Mumbai, once known as Bombay, has been the throbbing nerve centre of Hindi cinema for long. But the real city never found its way to the screen till the late 1970s. Muzaffar Ali’s Gaman was one of the first films to show Bombay with a level of authenticity. Though it was Farooq Shaikh’s only third Hindi film, what he was able to achieve with his portrayal of a migrant, Ghulam Hassan, was truly spectacular.
Mukul Anand was MAD. It was the name of his company, and it was what his team called him. No filmmaker of his generation had the kind of sweeping, panoramic vision and grandeur that his cinema exhibited. In fact, Bollywood of the 90s was too small to fit the scale of his dreams.
Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s 'Die Panne' has spawned many adaptations, including HBO’s 'The Deadly Game', Bengali film 'Anusandhan' and Bollywood’s recent release 'Chehre;. But it was Vijay Tendulkar’s 'Shantata! Court Chalu Aahe', which is spun around its germ, that stands out?
Inspired by this school of filmmaking and its immense possibilities, a whole generation of Indian filmmakers burst into the scene in the mid-20th century. They identified themselves as artists, and they swore by realism.
Right from Prithviraj Kapoor to Aadar Jain, the Kapoor bloodline has been in films for an unbroken span of 93 years. It was from Peshawar that Prithviraj set sail for Bombay, and landed a job as an actor when he was discovered by Imperial Film Company’s Bhagwati Prasad Mishra in 1929.
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