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Mango Soufflé (Mahesh Dattani, 2002)

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Titli (Rituparno Ghosh, 2002)

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Meena Kumari in आरती Aarti (Phani Majumdar, 1962)

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क्षय Corrode (Karan Gour, 2011)

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My profile on Letterboxd if anyone has intrest <3

https://boxd.it/5ZVf1

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>> ballads for the bus ride home

“pehli nazar” - devika

“humsafar” - strings

“o meri jaan” - k.k.

“fly” - lee seung yeol

“aitbaar” - vital signs

“night snack” - frankie chan + roel a. garcia

“teri yaad” - jal

“the way” - angelo

“main jahan rahoon” - rahat fateh ali khan

“shang ti te pang chu” - mei chi chiang 

“din guzre woh” - papon

“kiss of life” - sade

“khirki” - strings

“yeh tanhai” - k.k.

“jiyein kyun” - papon

“door na jaa” - rana mazumder

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JOAN CRAWFORD in DANCE, FOOLS, DANCE (1931)

— dir. Harry Beaumont

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I did this in an effort to document some of the most sensitive and interesting portrayals of women I’ve seen in Hindi cinema so far, and the women who were behind them who were just as iconic. “Tragedy Queen” is a kind of tasteless moniker that followed actresses like Meena Kumari, remembered for roles like an ill-fated tawaif/courtesan in Kamal Amrohi's Pakeezah or the lonely and miserable young daughter-in-law of an illustrious family in feudal Bengal who eventually drifts into obscurity in Abrar Alvi’s Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam. But Meena Kumari’s real life is also remembered for mirroring the sadness that followed the characters she played and is romanticized to a deplorable degree. She wrote poetry, she drank, she loved, but most of all she knew the burdens of being a woman and in an industry where these women were the one-dimensional fantasies of the men who wrote them, she unearthed in her roles the unfairness of it all. Beyond this there are songs from South Asian women who have also taken verses written by men and transformed them completely to tell of longing, desire, anger, happiness, and sadness. Translations of dialogue are under the “read more”.

sahib bibi aur ghulam (meena kumari’s dialogue)

saeeda begum “sassi”

zohrabai ambalewali “shayad woh ja rahein hain" 

garm hava (gita siddharth’s dialogue)

noor jehan "mujhse pehli si mohabbat”

sparsh (shabana azmi’s dialogue)

satyajit ray “charu upset” (theme)

shubha joshi “sanwariya dekh zara”

ek doctor ki maut (shabana azmi’s dialogue)

vani jairam “najariya ki mari”

umrao jaan (rekha’s dialogue)

begum akhtar “diwana banana hai”

mahal (madhubala’s dialogue)

geeta dutt “tumi je amar”

raat aur din (nargis’ dialogue)

lata mangeshkar “awaara aye mera dil”

khoon bhari mang (rekha’s dialogue)

asha bhosle “mujhe maar daalo”

lata mangeshkar “aaj phir jeene ki tammana hai”

bhumika (smita patil’s dialogue)

Keep reading

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>> o mother save our harvest from the devil 

ongoing compilation of chorus songs about nation-building, community woes, celebrations of the harvest, displacement, and the alienation of capitalism in early to mid 20th century india from colonial and post-colonial indian cinema (with a focus on leftist productions like IPTA films).

lakh lakh chanderi (shejari, 1941)

jai dharti maiyya jai ho (dharti ke lal, 1946)

utho ke hamein waqt (neecha nagar, 1946)

hum rukhenge bhi nahin (neecha nagar, 1946)

kodala kodala (mana desam, 1949)

yeh toh majdhar hai (nagarik, 1952)

dharti kahe pukar ke (do bigha zamin, 1953)

hariyala sawan dhol bajata (do bigha zamin, 1953)

koyithupattu / harvest song (neelakuyil, 1954)

raat gayi phir din aata hai (boot polish, 1954)

ramaiya vastavaiya (shree 420, 1955)

dukh bhare din (mother india, 1957)

ganga gangar tarange (ganga, 1960)

thinakkam theyyakkam (mudiyanaya puthran, 1961)

pachanellu elelam / ellaarum thattanu (mudiyanaya puthran, 1961)

puthan valakkare (chemmeen, 1965)

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kahin deep jale kahin dil (somewhere a lamp burns, somewhere a heart)

songs about mysterious women, vengeful spirits, female serpents, witches, and more from indian cinema.   

“kahin deep jale kahin dil” lata mangeshkar

“sote sote aadhi raat” salma agha

“jaaneman” sharon prabhaker

“pyar tera pyar” lata mangeshkar

“ninaivo oru paravai” s. janaki

“tere sung pyaar mein” lata mangeshkar

“aap ke pyar mein” alka yagnik

“saathi tu kahan hai” suman kalyanpur

“aaj ki raat” asha bhosle

“varai naan unnai” nithyashree & tippu

“aasche shey aasche” lata mangeshkar

“gupt (theme)�� kavita krishnamurthy & hema sardesai

“uruguthey ithayame” vani jairam

“bees saal baad” anuradha paudwal

“oru murai” sujatha mohan

“main ek sadi se” lata mangeshkar

“jeena hai toh” usha khanna

“varuvaanillarumee” k.s. chitra

“rote rote raina” asha bhosle

“naina barse rhim jhim” lata mangeshkar

“woh phir aayegi” anuradha paudwal

“aaja re pardesi” lata mangeshkar

“jhoom jhoom dhalti” lata mangeshkar

“kovalanum kannakiyum” k.s. chitra

“chhun chhun ghungharwa” rajkumari & zohra ambala

“aayega aanewala” lata mangeshkar

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dusted my old film camera and shot some expired 35mm film on my trip to india

photo by mahi

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aaj ki chai is accompanied by history lessons and nostalgia for simpler days where a meeting over a cup of tea meant something in m.f. hussain’s last and most well-known feature film, meenaxi: tale of 3 cities (2004). peep m.f. hussain himself sitting at the same irani cafe tabu & raghubir yadav are at (where tabu’s booming voice frightens him just as he takes a sip).  

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the serving of this couple was SOMETHING

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to watch (w hard subtitles)

For Maya (Vasudha Joshi, 1997)

The house in the hills opens to the lilting velvet of Shubha Mudgal’s thumri. Ranjan Palit’s camera, suffused with compassion and melancholy, tracks up the stairs of an ancestral mansion, steeped in the past. Maya, the daughter of film-maker Vasudha Joshi, playfully circles a pillar, beginning a new arc, as four generations of women and their stories unfold.

Constructed through conversations, interviews and candid family moments, For Maya (1997), a remarkable film by Vasudha Joshi, revisits the space of the familial. It is a voyage that brings forth not spectacular acts of violence, but the quotidian force fields of female power and resistance, through an autobiographical narrative that draws the viewer into its gentle vortex of memory—memories of subjugation of women over generations. A new kind of feminist ethnography unfolds. For Maya, made as a part of a series of films to mark the 50th anniversary of India’s Independence, marks a shift in the Indian feminist film-making, a shift towards interweaving the personal with the political, through an exploration of middle-class `normality’, a gentle, non-polemical introspection, which foregrounds everyday struggles in women’s lives.

As the sun nudges shadows in the long corridors of memories, Joshi, in a letter to her sister, Meenu, writes about a dream, a premonition about her mother, on her journey back to her maternal home in Almora. As Joshi walks through the chiaroscuro of empty corridors in her natal home, an old mute gramophone, empty vessels, forlorn memorabilia—the detritus of lives gone by—reveal themselves. Leafing through faded photographs, the film-maker stumbles upon the stories of her grandparents. 

The viewer learns about Joshi’s unnamed grandmother not through her own words. She is silent and silenced, a shadowy figure, who smiles out of an old photograph, whose story echoes the stories of many women of her era and years to come. Meenu shares memories of their grandmother, who was never allowed to play as a young girl: the beginning of a long haul of denial, subtle subjugation and resistance…

– K. P. Jayasankar & Anjali Monteiro, “Reimagining the Familial” in A Fly in the Curry: Independent Documentary Film in India (2015)

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SOME of the films i watched (and rewatched) so far this year by women directors! there’s a lot of acclaimed documentaries (considering how prolific indian women have been in the realm of documentary filmmaking – always top marks!), but it was also exciting to watch feature length films, both from recent years and those unfortunately forgotten from the 1980s and onwards. ive linked some you can watch online. 

ruchika oberoi - island city (2015) | pushpa rawat + anupama srinivasan - nirnay (2012) | paromita vohra - partners in crime (2011) | samina mishra - the house on gulmohar avenue (2005) | vijaya mehta - pestonjee (1988) | konkona sen sharma - a death in the gunj (2016) | sai paranjype - chashme buddoor (1981) | deepa dhanraj - something like a war (1991) | vasudha joshi - cancer katha (2008) & for maya (1997) | bela negi - daayen ya baayen (2010) | paromita vohra - where’s sandra? (2006) | aparna sen - paromitar ek din (2000) | pamela rooks - train to pakistan (1998)