Tracing the obsession of the two filmmakers with the figure of the courtesan, actor, and sex-worker, often rolled into one lonely, headstrong character type Notice the similarity in posture in the poster for Mandi (Benegal, 1983, top photo) and Gangubai Kathiawadi (Bhansali, 2022). What else do you notice? Although the web series Heeramandi was all over our screens in the…
Tag: Mandi
50 years and counting: The magnificent reign of Naseeruddin Shah
It is half a century since Shyam Benegal’s Nishant in 1975 where Shah made his debut proper. (He had a walk-on part in the 1967 film Aman, that featured philosopher Bertrand Russell in a cameo.) In the years since, Shah has acted in an astounding 274 films listed on IMDb, with at least one film releasing every calendar year across this half century. A fan’s list of her favourite Naseer films using Bharata’s rasa theory
The Seedling That Birthed a Tree of New Storytelling
50 years of Ankur. 50 years of Shyam Benegal, the anchor of the New Wave movement in Hindi cinema In that last light of day before it is all gone and the crickets have begun calling, a man hurries through paddy fields swollen with the rain that has fallen all day to a hovel that stands across his sturdy home,…
The Courtesan, the Sportsperson and the Desires of the Nation
The courtesan, a long-time fascination of Hindi cinema, is being replaced by the sportsperson. Corporeal labour and the art of sports is the kind of performance that the politics of post-2000 India celebrates. The courtesan represents women in pre-modern India, the sportsperson represents the ideal citizen of contemporary India. In particular, the sportswoman In the book Dancing with the Nation,…