ENTERTAINMENT
IFFR 2025: The resurrection of Bengali cinema, which Anurag Kashyap calls ‘ghatiya’
International Film Festival Rotterdam 2025: While Anurag Kashyap finds contemporary mainstream Bengali films in poor taste, Bengali indies remain underseen. Three Bengali films at IFFR, with one in competition, is a coup. Is it a mere fluke or a churning is underway? Filmmakers Suman Mukhopadhyay, Pradipta Bhattacharyya & Ishaan Ghose weigh in
MOVIES
Sundance Film Festival 2025: Rohan Kanawade’s Sabar Bonda (Cactus Pears) is the silver lining queer cinema merits
Sundance Film Festival 2025: Rohan Parashuram Kanawade feature debut ‘Sabar Bonda’ is the first Marathi autofiction to wrest the tragic from queer narratives & give fleshed-out rural gay characters a safe space for tender romance.
LIFESTYLE
Lalit Mohan Sen at 4th Chennai Photo Biennale: Portrait of pre-independent India by an unsung hero of Indian modern art
Lalit Mohan Sen was the first Indian whose Gandhi & Tagore woodcuts were acquired by London’s Victoria & Albert Museum for permanent display. Kolkata’s Emami Art gallery director Ushmita Sahu talks about Sen and his first major exhibition of 70 monochromatic images that Emami brings to Chennai.
ENTERTAINMENT
2024 year-ender: 24 women who made Indian cinema proud
In a male-dominated movie industry, women not only broke the glass ceiling, fought ageism and sexual harassment, in reel and real, but also brought home global awards and wrote history for India. Here is a list of handful of the many women out there working in the wings.
LIFESTYLE
‘Dystopia is our reality; forest is my muse & material’: Radhika Agarwala meets AI at Serendipity Arts Festival 2024
Serendipity Arts Festival 2024 showed how Artificial Intelligence & human creativity can meet ingeniously to make art. Radhika Agarwala's video installation depicts what the recently released 'India State of Forest Report (ISFR) 2023' revealed: a worrying depletion/destruction of India's natural dense forests.
MUSIC
Bickram Ghosh: ‘With Zakir Hussain, the sun is gone; we’ve lost somebody who truly stood for something’
Serendipity Arts Festival 2024: The unique selling point of the multidisciplinary arts festival is the River Raag, and this year, the first time in nine years of the festival, percussion set pieces by Carnatic legends BC Manjunath (mridangam) and Suresh Vaidyanathan (ghatam) regaled the audiences afloat on river Mandovi in Goa.
LIFESTYLE
Bhupen in Goa — An intrepid ode to India’s first openly gay artist by Gulammohammed Sheikh
Known for his bold expressions of homosexuality in art, the late Gujarati artist Bhupen Khakhar's works were the highlight at the recent 9th edition of the Serendipity Arts Festival, Goa, in a show curated by artist-friend Gulammohammed Sheikh, whose words made accountant Khakhar make art over six decades ago.
MUSIC
Zubin Balaporia of Indus Creed: ‘I still get royalties for a Govind Nihalani film’
Moneycontrol Exclusive: At Serendipity Arts Festival 2024, music co-curator & Indus Creed founder-keyboardist Zubin Balaporia talks about the curation, evolution of Indian rock, jamming with Manipuri rocker abducted by militants & the loss of Zakir Hussain.
ENTERTAINMENT
Mohammed Rafi Centenary: Man with a velvet voice & his golden pairing with composers
100th birth anniversary of Mohammed Rafi: How the legendary playback singer, who turned 100 on December 24, rose, shone and faded out in the Hindi film industry, where he alone possessed a singular & diverse voice & range, bringing success to heroes great and ordinary.
ENTERTAINMENT
Shyam Benegal (1934-2024): Hindi cinema exists in two halves — pre- and post-Shyam Benegal
Shyam Benegal Tribute: The pioneer of parallel cinema & Indian New Wave, which showed us new ways of seeing our fissured world & imagined women in a new light, passed away after a prolonged kidney ailment on December 23, 2024, in Mumbai, aged 90.
LIFESTYLE
Sunil Kant Munjal: ‘Serendipity Arts Festival must continue to question our role & civic responsibility’
Hero Enterprise chairman & patron founder of Goa's Serendipity Arts Festival (SAF) talks to Moneycontrol about its 9th edition, the new platforms launched to foster art for a global dialogue, AI & art, and going to Birmingham next year.
ENTERTAINMENT
Despatch director Kanu Behl: ‘I don’t want to be a career filmmaker; independent cinema is dead in India’
Manoj Bajpayee-starrer 'Despatch', which released on Zee5 on December 13, is a procedural in the world of crime/investigative journalism rather than a thriller. It takes a critical look at the individual that makes up the system.
MOVIES
IFFK 2024 ‘Second Chance’ review: A restorative Himalayan drama on loneliness, healing & unlikely friendships
29th International Film Festival of Kerala: Pan Nalin’s AD Subhadra Mahajan has made a graceful first film, spectacularly shot, and backed by Shyam Bora, producer of Bhaskar Hazarika’s films. 'Second Chance' screened at IFFK Kerala in Indian Cinema Now section.
MOVIES
IFFK 2024 'Swaha' review: An arresting spiritual take on the tyranny of fate of Bihar’s Musahars
29th International Film Festival of Kerala: Abhilash Sharma’s award-winning sophomore film, the Magahi-language drama 'Swaha' ('In the Name of Fire') had its India premiere in the Indian Cinema Now segment of the ongoing festival in Thiruvananthapuram.
ENTERTAINMENT
Raj Kapoor centenary: How the greatest showman, an Everyman tramp, imagined a nation
Raj Kapoor at 100: On his hundredth birth anniversary, December 14, Bollywood can take a leaf from actor-director-producer Raj Kapoor's cinema on India, that made the marginalised tramp the hero to critique the then-rising capitalism's ensuing greed & corruption.
LIFESTYLE
Serendipity Arts Festival 2024 curtain-raiser: 8 art & culture things to do over 8 days in Goa
The ninth edition of the multidisciplinary Serendipity Arts Festival will take place at Panjim, Goa, from December 15-22, 2024. This edition will feature 200-plus projects, by 1,800-plus artists, at 22-plus venues.
MOVIES
Jayan Cherian Part 2: ‘Censorship is a colonial law, it has no place in a democracy’
Final of a two-part interview with filmmaker Jayan K Cherian, who says his IFFI-premiered & IFFK-headed 'Rhythm of Dammam', on the Siddi community, is his most benign film; his past censored films & why censorship laws should be scrapped.
MOVIES
Jayan Cherian Part 1: ‘Hindu Siddis are found only in India’s Konkan region; re-enslaved by upper caste landowners’
First of a two-part interview with New York-based Malayalee filmmaker Jayan K Cherian, whose latest Konkani-Kannada film 'Rhythm of Dammam', on the Siddi community of Yellapur, Karnataka, premiered at International Film Festival of India (IFFI), Goa, and next shows in International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK).
MOVIES
‘Poem of the Wind’ review: The Tamil indie makes an Agam-Puram probe into masculinity
Ramakaushalyan Ramakrishnan's debut feature film 'Poem of the Wind', which premiered at the 13th Dharamshala International Film Festival (DIFF), has as its executive producer Parth Saurabh of 'Pokhar Ke Dunu Paar' fame.
ENTERTAINMENT
IFFI 2024 Winners: Golden Peacock for Toxic; Vikrant Massey, Phillip Noyce, Marathi film, Clément Favreau, Vesta Matulyte & Ieva Rupeikaite win honours
55th International Film Festival of India closed with Lithuanian film 'Toxic' winning Best Film, Clément Favreau bagging Best Actor for French film 'Holy Cow'. Satyajit Ray Lifetime Achievement Award given to acclaimed Australian director Phillip Noyce. Navjyot Bandiwadekar's Marathi film 'Gharat Ganpati' won Best Indian Debut Director.
ENTERTAINMENT
Film Bazaar 2024 Winners: Mukesh Chhabra to cast for free; Kurinji, Hunter’s Moon, Shape of Momo bag prizes; & Work-in-Progress awards
55th IFFI: The film market in Goa witnessed highest footfall & 29 projects from India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Australia, the UK, Germany & Hong Kong. From a pool of 180 feature submissions from 23 countries, 21 made the cut. Here's the list of Co-Production Market, Work in Progress and other winners & Film Bazaar Recommends selections
MOVIES
IFFI 2024 | Bhootpori review: Jaya Ahsan makes for a sparkling ghost in Soukarya Ghosal’s fairy tale
At the 55th International Film Festival of India (IFFI), Goa, Bengali filmmaker Soukarya Ghosal presented his film 'Bhootpori', which stars Bangladeshi actress Jaya Ahsan as a quintessential Bengali ghost — benevolent, empathetic & entertaining.
MOVIES
Rima Das, Kim Jiseok Award winner: ‘Making films like Village Rockstars is my calling’
AMPAS member & Assamese filmmaker Rima Das, whose award-winning 'Village Rockstars 2' screened at the 13th Dharamshala International Film Festival, says since she’s not from a film school, she hasn’t watched many films.
MOVIES
Dibakar Banerjee: ‘I’m an Indian; an Indian can be everything, I can be Hindu & Muslim, Bengali & Kashmiri’
MC EXCLUSIVE: Why filmmaker Dibakar Banerjee, whose Netflix-shelved film ‘Tees’ screened at the recently concluded 13th Dharamshala International Film Festival (DIFF), refuses to become a victim of the ‘sameness’ that has gripped Bollywood.
