The Young India

Santa Singh

Yes, Dev D is a very good movie. I wonder why it is being appreciated by many people; seems odd when other light-weight feather-type films make so much money in India. But as the popular saying goes in Hindi.

“time time ki baat hai pyaare”
(it’s all a play of time)

In time, we will know more about good films that were ignored by movie lovers.

Dev. D fans are talking about the movie breaking taboos and bringing a ‘new wave’ in Hindi cinema. Well, there have been movies that have done that before with respect to women liberation. I guess most fans have not been tuned to films of Amol Palekar. Of course, he is a low budget, art film-walla. So many people won’t go to theatres to see his movies. But they will recognise the liberated woman when they see her on screen, embellished with music and songs. Women liberation is not to be searched. It is to be waited for and then when given, it is to be applauded. Till the next time.

Kartikey Sehgal
Modern office cubicles are defined by strong walls, sound-proof glass doors and hushed conversations. Amidst the reigning modern discipline there are specimens of creative power in the form of the Laughing Buddha, cartoon sketches on walls and casual attires.

Starting from the collar, snake-like curvaceous patterns dominated his shirt-design. My interviewer announced.
“Seven percent”

Santa Singh
Outside a cinema hall, when the audience had finished braving another terrible Hindi movie, I walked towards a water cooler and found a young man, clad in a plain white shirt and faded jeans, reading some lines aloud.

These were not ordinary lines. They sounded like typical Hindi film dialogues. I wondered if this man would go on to become an actor and subject us to more atrocities. I felt like smashing his head then and there.

Kartikey Sehgal

[The author met actor Joy Sengupta who talked about his vision for Indian cinema.]

Joy Sengupta wants to develop films that cater to an international audience and the local Indian masses.

Movies should have fierce locality and a global vision. Movie watching should be an experience. It should make you grow from within.

That’s subject to movie-making…

That too should be an experience. Otherwise we’ll have masala films like *** and *** and ***. I am tired of Indian cinema that has been run over by Bollywood

Kartikey Sehgal
My mother and I made fun of Chinese babies while watching the film ‘Christmas in August’. Then we discovered that the film is Korean and we promptly implied all Chinese jokes to Koreans.

In this film, actor Suk-kyu Han plays the role of Jung-won, a terminally ill photographer who owns and manages a photo studio. We laughed whenever Jung-won smiled; he smiled almost all the time. We laughed when his father, who knows about the illness, stared passively or solemnly at people and things.

Santa Singh
“Just because modern physics doesn’t say so, doesn’t mean they don’t exist.”

–Vikram Bhatt (director of 1920) with his deep insight on ghosts

The following story is probably better than all those films you’ll watch in plush multiplexes.
With this confidence, I present some films that you think would try to aim high and achieve some milestone. But I have a feeling that you’ll still have to rely on the popcorn for that ultimate movie experience.

Kartikey Sehgal
The film Lagaan has a captivating screenplay. It mixes reality with fantasy and entertains while projecting the plight of the villagers.

The men of this village wear ironed clothes of different colours.
The women are healthy despite subsisting on a sukhi roti. Festivals
are celebrated with élan and the dances are passionately synchronised.
The village is happier than you would expect it to be under the economically cruel British rule.

Let’s remove fantasy from the realm of tangibility and see it as dream and imagination.

Santa Singh writes on Love Story 2050. He doesn’t seem to like it.
Everybody seems to be lampooning the once-in-a-lifetime masterpiece called Love Story 2050. Poor Harman baba, what crimes has he done? He is so original and does not look like another muscular hero at all. And the songs are so good and refreshing. That robot does not look like a transgender operation gone wrong.

The restroom is right there

Kartikey Sehgal writes about a song from the film Love Story 2050.

Young India enlists some of the interesting movies being screened at the Cannes Film Festival