Movie Murmur

The amendment to the Indian Citizenship Act 2019 lets minorities of Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan to become Indian citizens. While justifying the Indian Citizenship amendment Act, it is often sad that the three countries are theocratic states and that because it is so it is assumed that the 'minorities' are persecuted. This assumption might be flawed. The "honorable" theoretical assumption that the Constitution of Bangladesh does not treat all religions equally on effect of the state having its own stated religion is far from truth. Clause 2A of the Constitution of Bangladesh states: The state religion of the Republic is Islam, but the State shall ensure equal status and equal right in the practice of the Hindu, Buddhist, Christian and other religions. Further Part 2, Section 12 is on Secularism and freedom of religion. I t states: The principle of secularism shall be realised by the elimination of - (a) communalism in all its forms ; (b) t...

On an apparent level CAA seems to be independent. It wants convert Hindu, Parsi, Christian, Buddhist and Jain (and not others) illegal immigrants / refugees from the Islamic states of Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan into Indian citizens with a 2014 cut off date. The National Population Register (NPR) is a list of usual residents in India (people who have been residing in India for six months or those who have intention of staying). The National Register of Citizenship (NRC) is a list of all citizens of India. The law says that to have the NRC, the basis of it will be NPR. In the process of making NPR / NRC there will be lakhs of names that will not get into the list because of name mismatch, lack of documents etc. rendering genuine citizens of India nation less. I would assume the CAA would facilitate the hand picked Hindu, Parsi, Christian, Buddhist and Jain (and not other) settlers from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan among those identified as foreigners, to become I...

Article 14 of the Indian Constitution deals with equality before law. It states " The State shall not deny to any person equality before the law or the equal protection of the laws within the territory of India Prohibition of discrimination on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth ." This does not mean that a classification or division cannot be made amongst the people in the process of making any law. We can, for example, make a law for only for the Hindus, like the Hindu Undivided Family (HUF) Act and make it not applicable to a Christian. Article 14 does not allow what is called 'Class legislation' - which means that you cannot apply the HUF Act to all Hindus who are having five children and not otherwise. While presenting the Citizenship Amendment Act in the Loka Sabha, Home Minister declared that the classification or distinction made amongst the people for the purpose of the bill is - paraphrasing him - "Religiously persecu...

Girish Karnad Girish Karnad made his documentary film 'D R Bendre' (Da. Ra. Bendre) in the year 1972, fifty years after Robert Flaherty made one of the first long documentary narratives in USA called 'Nanook of the North'. Flaherty's silent film had, over an entire season, captured the life of Nanook and his family in the hostile terrain of the arctic. The film claimed to be anthropological in nature, shows us the 'reality' of the Eskimo community. But it is obvious that events shown in the film were staged, not by using professional actors but by deploying 'real' life characters and 'real' locations. Forty three years before Karnad made 'D R Bendre', Dziga Vertov filmed 'The Man with the Movie Camera' in the erstwhile Soviet Union, portraying a day in the life of a city. This silent film is a representative of what is called the 'Kino-Pravada' group of films made by Dziga Vertov and his associates. In Russ...

The cover page of the Draft of National Education Policy - 2019 The Draft National Policy of 2019 on Education was released by the Government of India on the 31st of March 2019, a day after the election results were announced. Here is a montage of a few paragraphs nested under a  subsection of titled ' Education in the local language/mother tongue; multilingualism and the power of language ' - and some reflections on them. Page 81 of the Draft Education policy echo these words, " Children learn languages extremely quickly when immersed early, and multilingual children in studies around the world have also been found to learn faster and be placed better later in life than those who are unilingual ....... A multilingual India is better educated and also better nationally integrated .... ''. These words embody the noble intentions of the policy which clearly asserts that the exposure to multi languages early in life would be beneficial to the individual ...

A grab from the film ''Pamphlet' The success of anything would probably be reflected on how consistent it has been. Judging by this standard, The National Short Film Festival (NSFF), an event organized by the Department of Media and Communication Studies (DMCS) of the Savitribai Phule University in Pune is a highly flourishing film festival, as they have been holding it for nearly eight consecutive years now. The film festival showcases films that are below thirty minutes in length - fiction and nonfiction & student or otherwise - and awards nominal cash prizes in about ten categories. Although the department head Dr Madhavi Reddy is the inspiring force behind the festival, all the planning and execution work is done by her students to whom she has delegated responsibilities. Going by the films that were screened in the film festival, it seems that the film festival over the years has given a much needed fillip to the ever thriving short film making scene in...

A still from 'Touch of Evil' The first thing that strikes you with the mention of the 1958 movie 'Touch of Evil' authored by Orson Welles are the magnificent long takes that the film is adorned with. In simple words, long takes are those shots where the camera is not switched off for a long time. Legendary among the long takes in the 'Touch of Evil' is the one that comes in the very beginning of the film - in fact in the very first shot of the film that runs for about three and a quarter minutes. This write up is in appreciation of the cinematic genius of that particular shot. Let us first watch the shot. This shot, as you have seen, chronicles the immediate moments before a bomb gets blasted. The location is supposed to be the border towns of two countries - America and Mexico. The set used in the film for this particular shot is about three to four blocks of the town on the Mexican side and a few yards in the American side. Most roads in the...