Shashwat

आज का ज़माना सांस्कृतिक तरलता का ज़माना है। या यूं कहें, लैंगिक, सामाजिक और सांस्कृतिक तरलता का ज़माना। सब तो नहीं, पर कम-से-कम आज कई खुले दिमाग वाले लोग हैं, जैसे की शायद आप, जो ये आलेख पढ़ रहे हैं, जो अलग को स्वीकार करते हैं न कि उसे किसी भी प्रकार से कष्टप्रद मानते हैं। ऐसी सोच उस देश के लिए आवश्यक हो जाती है, जो सांस्कृतिक रूप से उतना ही समृद्ध है जितना कि वो पितृसत्ता का पुजारी रहा है, और जिसका कुछ सात से आठ दशकों पहले का इतिहास विदेशी नियंत्रण और आक्रांताओं से भी जुड़ा है। ऐसी सोच उस देश के लिए जरूरी है जहां एक धर्मविशेष अधिकाधिक रूप से विद्यमान है, पर बाकी के धर्मों का सम्मान न करने का सवाल ही नहीं बनता, बल्कि उन अल्पसंख्यक धर्मों की प्रकृति को सहेजने का निरंतर प्रयास होता है (धर्म एक ऐसा कॉन्सेप्ट है जो मेरे लिए मायने नहीं रखता, सच पूछें तो)। ऐसी तरलता उस देश में जरूरी हैं जहां के युवा शायद दुनिया में सबसे ज्यादा हैं।  इसीलिए मैं यहां एक तरह से भाषाई तरलता का प्रयोग कर रहा हूं। पहले मन में आया की ये आलेख भोजपुरी में लिखा जाए। पर भोजपुरी का आप उतनी आसानी से अनुवा...

Cinema is an artform which at its most fundamental and visual form, is one which is the most faithful towards world-building. Visual spectacles, having said that, constantly walk the tightrope of being an artistic medium and not being one in entirety. Superhero cinema stumbles on it, it drops dead at times (Looking at you, Whedon Cut!) and manages to reach the end point at other times (Snyder' Cut, that's you!) When it comes to contemporary visual spectacles, Christopher Nolan, the British-American filmmaker with those glimmering blue eyes and an interest in Physics of the highest order, is responsible, more than partly, at twisting the strands of that tightrope and strengthening it for those invested to walk on. A glistening commercial flavour adorns his work with conviction. And the beam of light is so strong that those who enter, more often than not, are compelled to submit. The fandom is strong (and toxic at times, insensitive in places, purely ignorant in oth...

Ray made me feel a hell lot of things. But most of all, it made me angry. Not sad. Not disappointed. Not defeated. Just angry. And rather cheated. 2021 is a terrible year as well as one which is nothing short of a benchmark for cinema. On 2 May 2021, we commenced the year-long Birth Centenary celebrations of Satyajit Ray, the ultimate movie master of Indian cinema and most certainly, of the world. He hit the road with a song on everyday struggles of human life, progressed to make compelling narratives questioning religion and politics come to life, derived a sense of history and heritage and let viewers see the real India through an utterly transparent gaze. His feminist, revisionist spirit gave him films like Charulata, Mahanagar, Devi and various female arcs for his other very popular works.  I won't call Ray a visionary. He was a vision that Mother India, or whatever you choose to call this nation of ours, wanted us to see and concieve art with. After his death in 19...

Anurag Kashyap's Gangs of Wasseypur didn't register itself as an event in Indian cinema, so much in the time of its release, as much as it did subsequently. On a fundamental level, it changed how we perceive Anurag Kashyap. He has been a master when it comes to restoring the darkness into the glossy edges of Bollywood panorama. He rebuilt a tragedy and the layers underneath with Black Friday, shot his creativity into a euphoric high with Dev-D and dissected the politics of hierarchy in Gulaal. However, Gangs of Wasseypur didn't heighten the gloom in his storytelling- at least that isn't what I believe. It engraved a lot of humanity in the lives of these gangsters. The cinematic substance of the film was a triumph. But that isn't the focus of what I'm writing about at the moment. The sequential inspirations Kashyap took from Francis Ford Coppola and Sam Peckinpah would be for the discussion for some other day. As someone who was born and brought up in Dhanbad, I ...

In the world of big names such as the Oscars and the Golden Globes, Movie Geeks Awards (MGA) hold a special pertinence, and that's because of their reliability in rewarding the films that propped the spirit of cinema that very year. The awards fascinate in more ways than one, majorly because of the lack of involvement of big names and the online, live and free give-away of the Awards, on their Facebook Group portal in the form of notification. Given the ever-changing world of social media, this is still a remarkable medium to give-away the much-awaited awards season hype. The awards this year were conducted by Kashif Bhatti, the founding member and the Rahul Gandhi of the admin panel, i.e., Sahin Mondal.  The enthusiasm throughout the awards was extraordinary, the comment section crossing more than one-thousand comments depending upon the changing moods of the audience and their reactions towards the awards being conferred. I, through my reportorial point of view, try to enlist the...