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If I were asked about the one sound in the world I love, hands down the answer would be the whirring of a film projector. In this day and age, when digital is king, I still remember the joys of watching films at my uncle’s house, the whirr of the projector, the dancing of dust in the light in front of the lens and – joy – the ability to send the thing into reverse, which gave us countless hours of silly pleasure. I still remember the excitement of learning how to use the projector myself, a skill that I’m sure has grown rusty as I’ve enjoyed a world of media streamed right to my computer.

The changing nature of the film business in India acts as a catalyst to explore the relationship between a father and a son in Bengali director Kaushik Ganguly’s latest film, Cinemawala. Pranabendu...

“I am not handicapped,” says Khoka, the protagonist of Kaushik Ganguly’s Chotoder Chobi, when he is offered a seat reserved for the physically challenged on public transport. Khoka is a dwarf. The film by Kaushik Ganguly tells the story of people affected by dwarfism and their fight for existence and a normal life.

Khoka (Dulal Sarkar) works as a clown in a circus. His life takes a turn when his colleague- Shibu, also a dwarf-meets with an accident. Khoka is entrusted with the responsibility of handing over the compensation to Shibu’s family. He meets his daughter Soma and strikes a bond immediately. Soma suffers from the same physical condition as Khoka.

The story examines various issues at deeper emotional level- self pity versus self respect, survival versus existence, choice versus compromise and ultimately realism and romanticism. Ganguly successfully shows how most dwarfs who work in circus live a...

A portrait of Satyajit Ray by Rishiraj Sahoo | Source: Wikimedia commons

Let’s start to play a game here – What is common between the 9 Bengali films listed below:

1 – Antaheen (2009, dir: Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury) advertised that this was the first film after Satyajit Ray’s Aranyer Din Ratri where Aparna Sen and Sharmila Tagore acted together. It went further stating that even the Ray masterpiece didn’t have the two pitted against each other in the same frame as this film did.

2 – Abar Aranye (2003, dir: Goutam Ghose) took three of the four characters of Aranyer Din Ratri to the forest of Dooars on a sequel train at a time when the DVD, CD version of the Ray original was not readily available.

3 – Aborto (2013, dir: Arindam Sil) flaunts that all the characters of the film have the same names as the different major characters in the master’s film oeuvre.

4 – Charulata 2011 (2012, dir:...

The highly-rated film The Lunchbox has lost the race as India's Oscar nominee for 2013. The elegiac, haunting tragic Gujarati travel drama The Good Road has won the coveted privilege of being India's official Oscar entry for this year. The film earlier won the National award for Best Feature Film in Gujarati. Speaking on the decision on Saturday evening the head of the jury for the Oscar selection, filmmaker Gautam Ghose said, "We chose this wonderful Gujarati film The Good Road. We were surprised by the film. There were other strong contenders in the short-list, Ritesh Batra's The Lunchbox Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra's Bhaag Milkha Bhaag , Gauri Shinde's English Vinglish and Kamal Haasan's Vishwaroopam and also two regional films Kaushik Ganguly's Shabdo, and the Malayalam film Celluloid directed by Kamal." There were 16 members in the jury. They were given the task of sifting through all the entries.

The first edition of the Extravagant India! International Indian Film Festival will be launched in Paris in association with the Indian Embassy in Paris and the Paris City Hall showcasing Indian cinema from October 16-22, 2013.

The festival will have competitive and non-competitive sections along with interactions with filmmakers and meetings with industry experts to boost co-productions between India and France.

There are three sections in competition: feature films, short films and documentary films.

Feature films in competition are Ship of Theseus by Anand Gandhi, Shabdo by Kaushik Ganguly (French Premiere), Ugly by Anurag Kashyap, Lunchbox by Ritesh Batra, Raajneeti by Prakash Jha (French Premiere) and Kahaani by Sujoy Ghosh (French Premiere).

Short films in competition are Skin Deep by Hardik Mehta, Tatpaschat – And Then by Anadi Athaley, Allah Is Great by Andrea Iannetta, For Hire by Varun Chavla and The Three Of Us by Umesh Kulkarni.

Faith Connection by Pal Nalin (European Premiere), Char,...

Anurag Basu best known for the recent success of his film Barfi, has apparently acquired the rights to remake the Bengali film Shabdo. The national award winning film which was directed by Kaushik Ganguly revolved around the life of a foley (sound recording specialist) artist and featured Ritwik Chakraborty, Raima Sen, Churni Ganguly, Victor Banerjee and Srijit Mekherji. As for the Hindi remake, Anurag will be producing as well as directing the film, while Kaushik will be assisting him in scripting the same. Currently, under scripting process, the film's shoot should commence by December.