cinema

“I love solitude but I don’t need it to write”

Sohini Chattopadhyay

The poet, lyricist and adman says advertising has helped his poetry

Get the (Dirty) Picture

Aastha Atray Banan

Why the movie matters even though it is far from groundbreaking cinema

What Bollywood Thinks of You

Rahul Bhatia

…and why that should make you gnash your teeth

The Strange Silence of Mahesh Bhatt

Shaikh Ayaz

One of the things we missed most after Radiagate was him announcing a film called Phone Call. Precious words on his recent reticence

Confessions of a Subtitle Checker

Open

“People would be stunned hearing me shout out to my boss, ‘Is motherfucker okay or can bastard go?’”

Confessions of an assistant director

Open

“The key to a successful assistant director is finding the balance between getting work done and doing it yourself.”

Funny Bone to Pick

Rahul Jayaram

Cartoonist Nirmish Thaker is tracing the history of cinema through caricatures, and you can be pretty sure he’ll give you enough to chortle about.

Actor, director, social activist... Aparna Sen’s seventh film as director, The Japanese Wife, releases next Friday. She speaks on her new film and how her frustration with mainstream cinema led her to make her own movies.

Propaganda on a Screen Near You

KA Shaji

Entertainment in Tamil Nadu is almost entirely motivated by politics, and the DMK is nowhere near loosening its grip on audiences.

One Hundred Years of Akira Kurosawa

Saibal Chatterjee

Shakespeare, Tolstoy or American crime fiction, Akira Kurosawa fashioned them into his own unique brand of cinema. On his centenary, Open remembers the man whose films launched a thousand remakes.