258. Cinema Strikes 1: The Cinema’s Expanded Afterlife

In 2015, students of the Film & Television Institute of India took the cinema to the streets with a strike. One of the first of the agitations that raged across India’s universities at that time, it defined the right to make and show films as central to freedom on the campus. The names of Eisenstein and Pudovkin, John Abraham, Tarkovsky and Ghatak, recited in slogans and displayed on banners, evoked a history of political cinema that had set itself against the might of India’s political establishment.

This podcast series, commemorates that historic struggle, in these three episodes of John-Ghatak-Tarkovsky

Episode 1, The Cinema’s Expanded Afterlife, tells a longer cinematic history of a technological and political transformation. The age of film was born more or less after the First World War, signalling a new age of mass democracy. Ever since then, filmmakers have been in the line of fire as the cinema, standing in for a new public domain, has seen battles take place on the street, in courtrooms, and of course in movie theatres.

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Archival (in their own voices) Ritwik Ghatak, Mani Kaul, Kamal Swaroop, Saeed Akhtar Mirza, Gurvinder Singh, Vinod Khanna, Prateek Vats, U.R. Ananthamurthy, Amol Palekar, Prakash Jha, Alankrita Srivastava, Vijay Tendulkar, Nakul Singh Sawhney, Paul Mason, Manuel Castells, Rohith Vemula

Performances (using voice cloning) Miss Ida Dickinson (1928), Mahatma Gandhi (1946), S.K. Patil (1951), Justice Mukul Mudgal (2013), Additional Solicitor General, Government of India (2015)

In discussion: Lawrence Liang, Sudhanva Deshpande, Abhijit Gupta, G. Arunima, Ravi Sundaram, Sahana Manjesh, Shilpi Gulati, Nandini Sundar

Texts cited: Shreya Singhal and Ors. v. Union of India, 2015 Report of the Film Inquiry Committee (1951): S.K. Patil, Chairman Indian Cinematograph Committee Report (1928) K. A. Abbas vs The Union Of India & Anr on 24 September, 1970 K.M. Sankarappa vs The Union of India, Karnataka High Court, April, 1990 Public comments sought on the Cinematograph (Amendment) Bill 2021, Ministry of Information & Broadcasting The Cinematograph (Amendment) Bill, 2023 Report of the Committee of Experts to Examine Issues of Certification Under the Cinematograph Act 1952, 2013 (Justice Mukul Mudgal Chair)

Film soundtracks: Jukti Takko Aar Gappo (Ritwik Ghatak, 1974) Calcutta 71 (Mrinal Sen, 1972) Agraharathil Kazhuthai (John Abraham, 1977) Amma Ariyan (John Abraham, 1986) Open Cafe v2.5 (Naveen Padmanabha, 2012) Trimurti (Subhash Ghai, 1995) Kavita Gherao (Bombay Film Republic, Ben Friedman/Ashish Avikuntak, 1998) Muqaddar Ka Sikandar (Prakash Mehra, 1978) Chello Show (Pan Nalin, 2021) Om Dar-b-dar (Kamal Swaroop, 1988) Celluloid Man (Shiverndra Singh Dungarpur, 2012)