The conversation around the ways in which the current political climate in the United States has divided and pitted people against each other kept surfacing while I was watching Deepa Mehta’s film Earth. The film takes place in Lahore, India (now Pakistan), during the partition of India. Through the eyes of Lenny, a Parsi child, we are … More Watching Deepa Mehta’s Earth (1998) in 2017
I’ve been on a bit of a Bollywood watching rampage lately. So much so, actually, that I want to start learning Hindi. This is what happened to me several years ago with Japanese films. I fell in love with Japanese movies, from Ozu Yasujiro to Koreeda Hirokazu, and became determined to study the language. And … More Talaash (2012) & back to back with the Khans of Bollywood
In Jab Tak Hai Jaan director Yash Chopra takes us back to London for his directorial finale. The story begins in a flashback, with Akira Rai (Anushka Sharma) reading the journal of military officer Samar Anand (Shah Rukh Khan) which describes how he fell in love with Meera (Katrina Kaif) in London some ten years … More Jab Tak Hai Jaan (2012)
Pardes (1997), director Subhash Ghai’s ode to India, opens and closes with a dedication to India’s 50th year of independence, which provides some explanation for the film’s patriotic tone (the song “I love my India” can be heard no less than three times in the first two hours of the film). Pardes examines the relationship … More Pardes (1997)
In my last semester as an undergraduate student in Asian Studies, I was introduced to Bollywood through a sociology course on Indian cinema. Until that point, my studies had been on East Asia (specifically Japan), and I really enjoyed Japanese films from the postwar period (Ozu Yasujiro, Mizoguchi Kenji, Naruse Mikio, etc.). Because I have … More Watching Bollywood (for the not yet initiated)
comprehensionthroughrepetition 