Chorus [1974]

 Mrinal Sen’s radical and electrifying Calcutta Trilogy – Interview, Calcutta 71 and Padatik – received an absurdist epilogue with Chorus, which continued the trilogy’s political ferocity, sardonic mood and dazzling formal adventurousness. However, with the brutal crushing of the Naxalite revolution, this marked an end to this thrilling four-film cycle for the firebrand leftist intellectual, as he decided to pivot to more restrained palettes. Blending Third Cinema’s revolutionary manifesto with bold stylistic experimentation and proto-cyberpunk elements, and training a pungent lens towards cultural hegemony and religiosity, Sen constructed a dystopian world where the state apparatus operates for corporate interests, and how this order – maintained through manipulation and violence – starts crumbling as soon as the proletarian forces rise up in furious rebellion. The film’s subversive stance was evident from the get-go when a “Brechtian bard” (Rabi Ghosh) sarcastically reveals, through parodic ballads, the hypocrisy of organized religion. He keeps reappearing in the anti-narrative dealing with the escalating consequences of a sham job opening, at a powerful organization, that draws 30,000 applicants. When their disingenuousness becomes apparent, the swelling anger spirals into a massive resistance, and that makes the company’s conniving chairman (Utpal Dutt) – afraid of the dissent unleashed by the voiceless masses – resort to ever-increasing draconian measures through the police that’s servile to power. In parallel, we witness the personal stories of a few applicants desperately looking for jobs – an impoverished farmer’s son whose uncle is a slimy money-lender; a guy whose father is a disillusioned trade unionist; a helpless young woman – and a detached journalist doggedly following the unravelling story. Energetically shot by K.K. Mahajan and filled with polemical political songs, this anarchist gem hits its viewers with a Marxist sledgehammer.

p.s. This is a revisit. My earlier review of the film can be found here.

Director: Mrinal Sen

Genre: Black Comedy/Political Satire/Fantasy/Experimental Film

Language: Bengali

Country: India

Hirak Rajar Deshe (The Kingdom of Diamonds) [1980]

 Eleven years after his enduring anti-war masterpiece Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne, Satyajit Ray returned to his two everyman comrades possessing magical musical capabilities – Goopy (Tapen Chatterjee) and Bagha (Rabi Ghosh) – with the prescient, dystopian and terrific political satire Hirak Rajar Deshe. In place of the former’s playful humour, Ray resorted to Marxist agitprop devices for a ferocious denunciation of totalitarianism. His allegorical target is the titular monarch (Utpal Dutt in a towering performance), a narcissistic and authoritarian dictator who lords over his fiefdom, sycophantic minions and disenfranchised citizens – impoverished farmers and exploited workers in a diamond mine that gives him his power – and despises education as it ignites dissent by increasing knowledge and critical thinking. Anyone he can’t buy with glittering diamonds or terrorize by unleashing violence, he indoctrinates through state propaganda – brilliantly conceived couplets drenched in irony and disingenuity – and a machine invented by a loony, self-serving scientist (Santosh Dutta) that turns people into brainwashed automatons. His arch-nemesis, unsurprisingly, is Udayan (Soumitra Chatterjee), a freethinking rebel-teacher, who, unlike the despot and his unctuous lackeys, doesn’t speak in rhymes, openly disobeys state diktats, and inspires his students to question authority. Goopy and Bagha join the dissident teacher’s ragtag resistance in dismantling the tyrant’s oppressive empire from within. Made in low budgets – the static visuals, spare set décor and minimalist setup ensured that the core subtexts were never subsumed under fancy glitter – the fantasy-musical contained a string of memorable compositions by Ray himself, and, in particular, three moments of rousing political protest – the haunting folk song “Kotoi Rango Dekhi Duniyay”, the furious anti-fascist anthem “Nohi Jantro”, and the climactic battle-cry for liberation “Dori Dhore Maaro Taan, Raja Hobe Khan Khan.”

p.s. This is a revisit.

Director: Satyajit Ray

Genre: Black Comedy/Political Satire/Musical/Fantasy/Adventure

Language: Bengali

Country: India

Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne (The Adventures of Goopy and Bagha) [1969]

 Great children’s cinema or literature is never just that, and Satyajit Ray’s timeless gem – adapted from his illustrious grandfather Upendrakishore Ray Chowdhury’s short story – remains an evocation of that truism. As a playfully irreverent fantasy and adventure film, it remains a funny and immensely enjoyable watch for kids; and as an exercise in political and social satire and farce, it appeals equally to adults through its stirring anti-war commentary, and ironic observations on class, madness for power, and state oppression. It was also an unforgettable, ingeniously imagined musical, with all its extraordinary songs – from the joyous “Maharaja Tomare Selam”, the angry “O Mantri Moshai” and the biting “Halla Cholechhe Juddhe”, to my two personal favourites, the melancholic “Ek Je Chhilo Raja” and the magnificent anti-war anthem “Ore Baba Dyakho Cheye” – written and composed by Ray himself, drawing upon diverse forms and styles. Goopy (Tapen Chatterjee) and Bagha (Rabi Ghosh) are poor, tone-deaf and outcast village simpletons who’re granted three boons by a spectral ghost king – impressed by their good-hearted innocence – including the ability to transfix people through music. Through these gifts, they endear themselves to the King of Shundi (Santosh Dutta), whose kingdom is a paragon of peace and happiness, and stop the kingdom of Halla – whose ruler, the former’s brother (Dutta), is drugged into a violent maniac by his evil prime minister (Jahor Roy), aided by a sorcerer (Harindranath Chattopadhyay) and served by hungry, miserable subjects – from waging a senseless war against Shundi. The film’s showpiece sequence – striking for its infectious performances and Soumdendu Roy’s visual creativity – was the stunning, 6-½-minute ‘Dance of Ghosts’ tableaux; aided by a percussion-based soundscape, it delivered a pointed critique of class hierarchies.

p.s. This is a revisit. My earlier review of the film can be found here.

Director: Satyajit Ray

Genre: Comedy/Social Satire/Political Satire/Musical/Fantasy/Adventure/War

Language: Bengali

Country: India

Vivek (Reason) [2018]

 The English title for Anand Patwardhan’s searing and sprawling political documentary Vivek – made over 4 years, clocking a colossal 4 hours and 20 minutes (making this his magnum opus), and alternating between unsettling street reportage, fearless investigative journalism, exposés on religious majoritarianism and political extremism, scorching inquiries into toxic social fault-lines, and a no-holds-barred expression of dissent – is ‘Reason’. The closer translation of the word, however, is ‘Conscience’. The two incidentally formed the dual pillars on which Patwardhan constructed this blistering exercise that, unsurprisingly, faced significant censorship hurdles, and which the director managed to circumvent through canny bending of procedural guidelines. Divided into eight chapters that touched upon multiple interconnected topics informing the dismantling of contemporary India’s secular and pluralistic fabric with brazen impunity – thereby giving it the form of an epic and wide-ranging non-fiction book shaped by harsh objective truths and ironic authorial observations – it began with the murders of anti-superstition advocate Narendra Dabholkar and Communist social activist Govind Pansare, for their outspoken public campaigns against blind beliefs and medieval religious practices. It then branched into targeted violence, systemic persecution and extrajudicial vigilantism against any person or community considered antithetical to right-wing political forces and majoritarian religious and caste demographics – covering mob lynchings of Muslims; Dalit scholar Rohith Vemula’s death; shadowy supremacist and ultra-nationalist organizations with fascist agendas; the conspiracy surrounding ATS chief Hemant Karkare’s death; and massive agitations by the freethinking left-wing students of JNU, led by Kanhaiya Kumar and Umar Khalid. The dominant emotions that ran through the vast canvas of this defiantly pugnacious and confrontational work – which ended with journalist-activist Gauri Lankesh’s murder, thus bringing the film a full circle – were rage, angst and lamentation.

Director: Anand Patwardhan

Genre: Documentary/Essay Film/Investigative Reportage/Political Documentary

Language: Hindi/Marathi/English

Country: India

Jai Bhim Comrade [2011]

 Anand Patwardhan’s Jai Bhim Comrade remains political filmmaking at its most elemental – fearless, angry, uncompromising, rebellious, carrying a fiercely subaltern lens, and rejecting the idea of “art for art’s sake” – and a brutally unflinching examination of Dalit experience in India. Heroically and expansively filmed over 14 long years – its runtime of nearly 3 hours remains 2^nd only to Vivek in his filmography – it began with footage of the Dalit-Marxist poet-singer Vilas Ghogre from Patwardhan’s exceptional film Hamara Shahar from 12 years back, and whose tragic suicide in 1997 triggered this work. His self-annihilation was driven by extreme disillusionment – or was it a final act of protest? – upon the murder of a dozen Dalit residents of Mumbai’s Ramabai colony by the police, the zealous agents of a violently casteist society and state. Thereon, it branched into four intimately interrelated branches – a deeply personal memorialization of the Ambedkerite activist’s life-long resistance; an investigative reportage, over the following 1 ½ decades, into the brazen killings, the sham probe and mockery of justice that followed, and the despair that it left in its wake; an extension into other Dalit activists and artists – in particular, the dissident cultural troupe Kabir Kala Manch that performed anti-caste street theatre and songs, and the firebrand speaker and Dalit Panthers co-founder Bhai Sangare –; and documentation of the systemic oppression, caste atrocities and otherization that continues unabated, perpetuated by a majoritarian social order, right-wing political factions, and a proudly bigoted middle-class. Filmed in unvarnished visuals using portable video cameras, the weaving in of incendiary revolutionary music into its epic length – which reminded me of Barbara Kopple’s similarly courageous Harlan County, USA – remains its most electrifying and enduring aspect.

Director: Anand Patwardhan

Genre: Documentary/Investigative Reportage/Political Documentary/Essay Film/Musical

Language: Marathi/Hindi/English

Country: India

Hamara Sahar (Bombay: Our City) [1985]

 Anand Patwardhan, with his remarkable fourth film Hamara Shahar, firmly established himself as India’s foremost documentary filmmaker. Made using grass-root financing, shot with a mobile 16mm sync-sound camera, and distributed through alternative working-class channels to sidestep restrictions imposed by state authorities and corporate powers, this was like a bristling pocket-sized dynamite. Patwardhan – who blended political resistance into his filmmaking, influenced by the manifestos of Third Cinema and Imperfect Cinema – resorted to a deliberately dialectical approach while recording the extreme plight of the impoverished and disenfranchised slum and pavement dwellers of Bombay. The megapolis’ middle and upper classes, on one hand, cruelly and callously exploit their labours for building high-rises, disposing wastes, getting domestic help, and whatnot, while on the other treating them like bottom-feeders, complaining how they pollute the city’s shiny ambiance, illegally occupy lands that’re screaming to be monetized, and simply refuse to disappear. Along with proudly expressing their monstrous apathy, they also weaponize the police into destroying their shanty homes and forcibly evicting them through wanton violence. The director demonstrated radical empathy for the poor – across caste and religious lines – while recording their extreme tribulations and capturing their devastating misery; in parallel, he made his biting scorn eminently clear by allowing the city’s Municipal Commissioner, Police Commissioner, wealthy industrialists and pompous residents to express their classism, hypocrisy and casual apathy in the comfort of their sprawling homes, exclusive clubs and posh surroundings. These alternating and arresting interrogative segments were anchored by a song dripping with cutting anger and profound pathos performed by a street theatre troupe led by the Marxist-Dalit poet-singer-activist Vilas Ghogre. His shocking demise 12 years later would provoke Patwardhan’s magnum opus, Jai Bhim Comrade.

Director: Anand Patwardhan

Genre: Documentary

Language: Marathi/Hindi/English

Country: India

A Man Vanishes [1967]

 Shōhei Imamura’s fascinating hybrid documentary A Man Vanishes was like a virtuosic jazz composition – freely improvisational, filled with syncopated rhythms, and subverting formal boundaries over a progressively experimental jamming session. His first foray into non-fiction cinema was made at the peak of his remarkable creative burst. Imamura, being who he was, radically pushed the envelope in his deadpan style and turned it into a teasing metatextual exercise on the overlaps between truth, reality, artifice and performativity, and thereby sardonically reinforced the ironic idea that “objectivity is [nothing but] one of the fifty-seven kinds of subjectivity.” It began in the veins of a matter-of-fact investigative account. Post-War Japan was plagued by “Jōhatsu” – or “evaporated people” – as numerous ordinary individuals were walking away and disappearing from their lives, families and jobs. The film zooms in on 32-year-old salesman Tadashi Oshima, who went missing 2 years back. With actor Shigeru Tsuyuguchi serving as the interviewer, and accompanied by the missing man’s enigmatic fiancée Yoshie Hayakawa who’s looking for closure, the director starts unearthing this supposedly timid man’s murky existence – he was caught upon committing financial embezzlement at his workplace, had a three-way torrid affair with an older woman, his samurai background was offended upon finding out Yoshie’s elder sister’s sexual relationships, and even supposedly demonstrated growing intimacy with the latter – and then did a volte face by shifting his focus to Yoshie instead and then on cinema itself. Strikingly shot in grainy, high-contrast B/W, sparingly laced with a deliciously idiosyncratic score, and the conversations and visuals often running out-of-sync, the DNA of this complex exercise was carried by such future Iranian masterworks as Kiarostami’s Close-Up and Makhmalbaf’s A Moment of Innocence.

p.s. This is a revisit. My earlier review of this film can be found here.

Director: Shohei Imamura

Genre: Documentary/Mystery/Avant-Garde Film

Language: Japanese

Country: Japan

In Memoriam: Patricio Guzmán – Filming the Haunted Memories of a Nation

 Few filmmakers have chronicled their country’s story with such devastating brilliance, uncompromising commitment and unflagging defiance as Patricio Guzmán, who passed away on 15^th Sep 2026. His oeuvre formed an interconnected story of Chile – encompassing Allende’s revolutionary hope, the brutal military coup and Pinochet’s repressive dictatorship, heroic resistance and enforced disappearances of leftists, collective and personal memories, and finally the pulsating 2019 uprising that reconnected the thread with Allende’s presidency.

Filmmakers who readily come to mind, whose filmographies have similarly served as tireless and disobedient mirrors to their countries’ political histories, faultlines and memories, include such radical storytellers and documentarians as Theo Angelopoulos (Greece), Francesco Rosi (Italy), Andrzej Wajda (Poland), Carlos Saura (Spain), Mrinal Sen (India), Hou Hsiao-hsien (Taiwan), Jia Zhangke (China), Lav Diaz (Philippines), Wang Bing (China), and Anand Patwardhan (India), among others.

On a personal note, my knowledge of Chile during my school days had largely been linked to Ivan Zamorano and Marcelo Salas, stars of their fine football team during the 1990s. It was thanks to Guzmán, and my immense admiration for his unforgettable documentaries, that I came to really know and understand this Latin American country, and develop a rather deep connection with it – one that has only grown since then. Along with other masters of this exciting yet often-neglected form, he also helped establish my profound love for non-fiction cinema.

Presenting a collage of the 9 films by the Chilean maestro – or 11, if one considers The Battle of Chile trilogy as three separate films – that I’ve watched. Also list below the links to my reviews of these titles, in chronological order of their release:

• The First Year (1972)
• The Battle of Chile (1975, 1976, 1979)
• Chile, Obstinate Memory (1997)
• The Pinochet Case (2001)
• Salvador Allende (2004)
• Nostalgia for the Light (2010)
• The Pearl Button (2015)
• The Cordillera of Dreams (2019)
• My Imaginary Country (2022)