Author: Partha Chatterjee
He became a film actor and give a resounding performance as the school master driven mad by the kidnapping of his beautiful wife by the lustful brothers of the local Zamindar. He also gave a fine account of himself in Swami directed by Basu Chatterjee. He appeared as an actor in films and Television, not only because he could test himself in another medium but also to buy the freedom to pursue his activities in the Theatre, namely writing plays.
Satyajit Ray and Ritwik Ghatak were two masters from the Bengali cinema of the 1950s. They were temperamentally dissimilar and yet they shared a common cultural inheritance left behind by Rabindranath Tagore. An inheritance...
Ismail Merchant’s passing away on May 25, 2005 marked the end of a certain kind of cinema. He was the last of the maverick film producers with taste who made without any compromise,...
Habib Tanvir (1923-2009), was perhaps the most famous Theatre personality in north India. An actor-manager in the Old-School mould, he led a crowded professional life, which, over the years, had invariably...
Marcello Mastrianni (1924-1996 ) was for many the most charismatic of European actors, and along with Jean Paul Belmond, the most subtle.He was, for many the most versatile actor in the world. There is something loutish about...
M.F. Husain’s two feature length fiction films, Gaja Gamini and Meenaxi are classic examples of having one’s cake and eating it too. In each case, the cake is delectable. True that the two films...
Water is both a word and a many hued idea. Its presence along with oxygen is crucial to life on Earth. Considering that India is a land of many rivers, water does not figure...
An artiste, even in this age of mindless greed and hurry, captures the public imagination, if only for a moment or two, should he or she answer to type, that is, of being a...
Habib Tanvir (1923-2009), was perhaps the most famous Theatre personality in north India. An actor-manager in the Old-School mould, he led a crowded professional life, which, over the years, had invariably spilt over into...
Rating [ratings] Sanjay film Padmaavat based on Malik Mohammad Jaisi’s long narrative poem from the 16th century, has finally been released after much bloodshed and violence across northern and western India. Things got...
