cinema

by

Off-Track Railways

THE railway system, one of the pillars of the Industrial Revolution, transformed societies, including the subcontinent, economically and socially. Henry Bartle Frere, chief commissioner of Sindh(1850-1859) had commented on the massive railway network the British planned. He said that it would unite not only the “distant provinces in one bond of material prosperity” but bring “distant peoples and races” closer to each other.

After 1947, the railways took different trajectories in India and Pakistan. While India maintained and enhanced the railways, the network saw gradual decay in Pakistan, destroying livelihoods, robbing people of prosperity and crushing their dreams and passion for their vocation — as engine drivers, boiler men, station masters, signalmen and more.

Continue reading →

by

Diary of a Feminist: A Role Highlighted

Eyes are vulnerable — those tenuous instruments, as blind Borges called them — and film is vulnerable. And it is the confrontation of two such vulnerabilities which makes the cinema such a poignant medium. — Bresson (‘Notes sur leCinematographe’).

Looking at Deepti Naval’s plain yet attractive face in Saath Saath. I thought there was after all a girl on the silver screen you could identify with – a pleasant identification, for she emerged as a strong-willed person who made her own decisions. Even the love-story wasn’t far-fetched. It could have happened to you, or to any other woman.

Saath Saath is not a very arty movie. It’s a soft, realistic, semi-serious film. But it’s one of those few ‘new wave’ Indian movies which make me wish we could have the same kind of parallel cinema in Pakistan.

Continue reading →