Ramesh Sippy’s Shakti (1982) isn’t as much about the Amitabh Bachchan and Smita Patil on-screen romance, as the on-screen histrionics of the Big B and and the Big D – Dilip Kumar. In a rare drift away from the moral weave of the movies of that period Sippy didn’t shy away from portraying a live-in [...]
RIP Yash Chopra of the Swiss Alps, of chiffon sarees and Deewar.
The attention that The Indian Public Domain Project is getting in the mainstream media sometimes seems a little disproportionate to me given that I’ve posted only a couple of movies here. Here’s what the film magazine Cine Blitz has to say on the project in its July 2012 issue: Rare Gems What an idea, sirji! [...]
The Hindi daily Amar Ujala (April 23, 2012) carried a home page anchor story on Cutting the Chai making Raja Harishchandra 3D 99 years after its first screening. Ravi Buleiy’s story repeats much of what is mentioned in the Raja Harishchandra (1913) on India Public Domain Movie Project (and in 3D) post, but adds an [...]
In India, cinema isn’t just a passion. It is frenzical. We have perhaps inherited this acute addiction from the man who started it all, 99 years ago – the Father of Indian Cinema Dhundiraj Govind Phalke (1870-1944). Dadasaheb Phalke as we better know him as, held the first show of Raja Harishchandra what is widely [...]
The recently launched India Public Domain Movie Project is getting some much needed publicity. Today’s Sunday Mid Day has a story on the story behind this Cutting the Chai project. HE MAKES INDIAN CLASSICS CLICK Ghaziabad-based blogger Soumyadip Choudhury has started a project to upload old Indian films — no longer under copyright — online [...]
Ever since I first understood the concept of public domain, this project of getting Indian films which out of copyright into a single place has been a recurring desire. But I never actually got around executing the idea, because the plans I drew were grandiose beyond my resources. While reading the chapter on Ashok Kumar [...]