The Journal
Essays & Dispatches
Long reads on the films, filmmakers and movements of meaningful Indian cinema.
15 Park Avenue (2005)
15 Park Avenue (2005) is Aparna Sen’s English-language film about a young woman with schizophrenia who inhabits a private reality centered on a home and family that don’t exist, and the older half-sister who devotedly cares for her, a compassionate exploration of mental illness, perception, and the boundaries of what we call real.
Tamas (1988)
Tamas (1988) is a made for television film written and directed by Govind Nihalani. Based on a Hindi novel of the same name by Bhisham Sahni, Tamas is set in the backdrop of a small town in the now Pakistani Punjab during the partition of India in 1947.
Mondo Meyer Upakhyan (2002)
Mondo Meyer Upakhyan (2002), also released as A Tale of a Naughty Girl, is a Bengali drama by Buddhadev Dasgupta about a fourteen-year-old girl who defies her mother’s plan to sell her into prostitution in favour of returning to school.
Ashadh Ka Ek Din (1971)
Ashadh Ka Ek Din (1971), based on Mohan Rakesh’s play of the same name, is Mani Kaul’s adaptation of the love triangle between Sanskrit poet Kalidasa, Mallika, and Priyangmanjari.
Vijeta (1982)
Vijeta (1982) is a coming-of-age Hindi drama directed by Govind Nihalani, tracing a young man’s passage into the Indian Air Force amid his parents’ fraught marriage.
Ijaazat (1987)
Ijaazat (1987) is Gulzar’s exquisitely poetic Hindi musical romance about an estranged couple (Naseeruddin Shah and Rekha) who unexpectedly reunite in a railway station waiting room five years after their divorce, tenderly excavating memories of their failed marriage and the other woman (Anuradha Patel) whose presence still lingers between them.
Dooratwa (1978)
Dooratwa (1978), Buddhadev Dasgupta’s debut feature, is a spare and poetically rendered Bengali drama — adapted from a Sirshendu Mukhopadhyay short story — that examines marital estrangement when a Kolkata professor discovers his young wife is pregnant by another man, winning the National Film Award for Best Bengali Feature Film.