Review
Review: TARSHI Talks About Sexuality and Relationships
TARSHI Talks on Sexuality and Relationships is such a welcome sea of information about sexes, sex, sexuality and relationships in an objective and ‘non-taboo’ manner.
By Shalini Khanna
August 3, 2017
Review: Khamosh Pani – What heaven is there for me?
Who fights, who flees and who flows with the tide? Branching off from the community, with all the comforts that it offers, can become a true test of character.This year marks the 70th anniversary of the Partition of India – a significant chapter in our history when millions of people were faced with this dilemma.
By Surbhi Dewan
July 1, 2017
How Queer are your Dating Apps?
Online dating websites and apps are one of those technological innovations that people did not think would ever do well….
By Smita Vanniyar
June 15, 2017
Review: Offers You Can’t Refuse
For many of us careening to adulthood at the time, these films pushed us to confront our own biases. They asked us to stand in Diane and Mansi’s shoes and ask ourselves, what would we have done? Would we spend one night with a man (Robert Redford, no less) for a million dollars? Would we be able to resist the option that opened up to Mansi? And the truth of it was that this was a difficult question to answer.
By Manjima Bhattacharjya
May 1, 2017
Review: Nishit Saran’s ‘Summer in My Veins’
In 1994, Delhi boy Nishit Saran left home to study filmmaking at Harvard University. By 1999 he had made the searing Summer in My Veins, capturing on camera his own trepidation at coming out to his mother. It is an important, lovely and poignant film.
By Divya Swaminathan
April 3, 2017
Review: Cinema’s Unintentional Counter-Narrative on Marriage
Reviewing three films (or the subplots of three films) to see how subplots show that marriage isn’t a destination or a single story that begins and ends in the ‘happily ever after’.
By Shweta Krishnan
Review: Lust, Sex and Pleasure: Is There a ‘Female Gaze’ in Tamil Cinema?
Don’t women lust after male bodies, don’t women fantasise? While examples abound of women chasing men, it is usually for the latter’s ‘good’ qualities – he’s brave, he’s handsome, he’s strong, he will protect, and yes, by-the-by, and it’s totally not on her mind, he has a sexy body.
By Vani Viswanathan
To the Beat of Activism on Gender and Violence in India
As someone who was surrounded by the sounds of music at home from my early childhood and with a parent who worked in rural education programmes, forming connections between art and (social) change wasn’t too difficult, albeit extremely challenging to explain to many other people who didn’t necessarily see the power that art has to deliver a message or be used as a tool for change.
By Pattie Gonsalves
December 5, 2016
Reel Review: Desire and Conciliation in Raj Kapoor’s Satyam Shivam Sundaram
Satyam Shivam Sundaram (Truth, God, Beauty) is the story of Rupa (Zeenat Aman), an archetypical abhagan (wretched girl), whose misery begins at her birth when her mother dies. She is immediately declared an accursed child and is shunned by others. Later, a freak accident results in scalding oil splashing across one side of her face, leaving her permanently scarred. Nevertheless, she goes about her daily life – alone, yet content.
By Syed Saad Ahmad
Review: ‘The Yellow Book: A Parent’s Guide to Sexuality Education’
In a country with a burgeoning population that still doesn’t believe in talking about sex openly, the book wants to help parents and teachers deal with uncomfortable questions rather than brush them under the carpet. To ensure that young children are not dismissed, distracted, or confused by adults who are too awkward or even (gasp!) ignorant of biology.
By Mad Momma
Reel Review: “Saucy Wow” in the documentary ‘Jahaji Music: India in the Caribbean’
The boisterous figure of Indo-Trinidadian chutney soca musician Denise “Saucy Wow” Belfon has ruffled the feathers of many an Indian-origin immigrant sentiment with her song ‘Looking for an Indian Man’.
By Ishani Dey
Reel Review: Romance Across Age and Race in ‘Ali: Fear Eats the Soul’
Emmi Kurowski (Brigitte Mira), a widow in her sixties, walks into a bar to take shelter from the rain. She is met with hostile stares by a mixed group of Moroccan immigrants and Germans. As a joke, one of his friends challenges Ali (El Hedi ben Salem m’Barek Mohammed Mustafa), a young strapping Berber man, to ask her for a dance. He agrees, and thus begins a romance across the taboo lines of race and age.
By Syed Saad Ahmad
September 15, 2016
Review: What Does Clothing Have to do with Sexuality in the Media?
There’s always another way of presenting a look, attire, accessories and bodies; of presenting the way we feel about ourselves and our sexuality, of presenting an acceptance of diversity.
By Shikha Aleya
Review: Tamil Cinema’s Women Scientists – Sassy, Nerdy, and Still Tamil
Looking through the prism of Tamil cinema, a female scientist distorts the simplistic, straightforward portrayal of women that most movies adopt. Her knowledge and authority on a subject enable her to challenge the hero (gasp!) in areas that he may not know about. Often, she flaunts her sexuality; it’s brash, open and departs from norms.
By Vani Viswanathan
Review: Art in the Age of Maintenance Work
Written in one sitting in Philadelphia, Ukeles’ manifesto was a manifestation of the rage she felt when she was pregnant with her first child and a male mentor proclaimed, “Well, Mierle, I guess you know you can’t be an artist now.”
By Niyati Dave
June 5, 2016