Search Results for: documentary

14th Feb: Spare Change Day

14th Feb: Spare Change Day

ByDeloret Imnidian

It was 14th February, 2007, the fateful day of the year marked with heart shaped outline, fancy greeting cards, red roses and an image of a person you could never confess your love to. Perhaps you had a date with a vintage car, but it didn’t go smooth because of bad transmission. Perhaps your heart ached for a stapler that ran out of pins and couldn’t hold all the pages together.
Strangely, I have no memory of that day, except the rain of nickels and dimes and a rainbow of cocaine just 5 millimeter wide. But this article is not about you or me or the euphoric rainbow, it’s about a great artist, who lost his creative spirit and spent last days of his life panhandling on streets. It’s about Ryan Larkin and how his colorful world grew darker to the point where there were no colors, only darkness. But let’s not mourn over his tragic demise, because it’s just another consequence of being an artist.

Sometimes in April [2005]: A Hard-Hitting Docudrama

Sometimes in April [2005]: A Hard-Hitting Docudrama

ByArun Kumar

Haitian film-maker Raoul Peck’s TV movie “Sometimes in April” (2005) opens on April 7th, the day of remembrance of the victims of the Rwandan Genocide (800,000 people were killed in 1994). A girl in a Kigali school asks her teacher Augustin Muganza about what could have been to stop the killings. Augustin answers with a set of ‘Maybe’, and eventually says the truth “I don’t know what could have been done”. It’s that uncertainty which haunts all of us humans trying to understand an act of genocide. “Sometimes in April” doesn’t treat its perpetrators as ‘monsters’, who have shed their human skin to maul innocent civilians.

Taxi [2015]: An Awe-Inspiring Iranian Minimalist Cinema

Taxi [2015]: An Awe-Inspiring Iranian Minimalist Cinema

ByArun Kumar

Taxi isn’t just a proclamation of Panahi’s boldness and defiance; it is also a nicely coiled allegory and a biting satire on the limitations imposed on him as well as on many fellow Iranians. While “This is Not a Film” (2011) was diffused with an atmosphere of despair and “Closed Curtain” (2013) laced with righteous anger, “Taxi” is enlivened with bursts of optimism and sarcasm (Panahi even smiles a lot in the film).

Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief [2015]

Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief [2015]

ByPallavi Tripathi

Going clear is a documentary but it works like a horror film because of the content it deals with. The structure of Scientology as deciphered by Alex Gibney through the interviews of multiple heads of the church who has now left the church due to the ‘assault’ inflicted upon them by the church is depicated quite effectively. The true horror comes with the revelation that people were doing what they were doing, however unethical and immoral it may be with full conscious and will.

The 400 Blows [1959]: An unsentimental film about Adolescence

The 400 Blows [1959]: An unsentimental film about Adolescence

ByAmritt Rukhaiyaar

I did read quite a bit about Francois Truffaut before watching ‘The 400 Blows’ and found the man notoriously interesting. Before Truffaut made his debut as a film director, he was a vehement film critic who infamously stripped movies he didn’t like, in his reviews. His harsh film criticism barred him from attending the 1958 Cannes Film Festival. Only one year later, he won the Best Director Award at the same festival for his debut film The 400 Blows. He was also one of the men who devised “The Auteur Theory”,

Jean Vigo: The Man who achieved Poetry with Prosaic Words and Acts

Jean Vigo: The Man who achieved Poetry with Prosaic Words and Acts

ByPallavi Tripathi

We live in the time where we question ourselves every minute- in the name of existentialism – is it worth it ? So, here is a person who lived only for 29 years, struggled all his life, had to battle illness along with the financial crisis to make and release his films. His films live, breath and leaves an impression on hearts, minds and soul of its viewer more than 80 years after it has released. Probably, that answers all the existential question

Cartel Land [2015]: On the Frontlines of Narco Culture

Cartel Land [2015]: On the Frontlines of Narco Culture

ByArun Kumar

At one early point in Director Matthew Heineman’s vibrant, drug war documentary Cartel Land (2015), we see a worn out, weeping woman talking about how her husband was kidnapped and tortured in horrific, unspeakable ways. The woman’s terrifying experience might make us think of “Cartel Land” as a subjective documentary on Mexico’s hazardous narco culture. But, surprisingly the documentary ends up being an objective one as Heineman accomplishes what he had set out to do – ‘to observe & document’.

10 Great Films High On Films Recommends: 3rd Edition

10 Great Films High On Films Recommends: 3rd Edition

Byhighonfilms

As one of the Angulo Brothers says Mr. Blonde’s lines while they were enacting the whole climax of Reservoir Dogs, my first reaction to it was exactly like Samuel Jackson in Pulp Fiction when he was told that hash is legal in Amsterdam, “oh man, I am going” he said out of excitement, I was almost that excited. Here are the 10 films that made it to the 3rd edition of our ‘HOF-Men Recommend’ Series. You can check out the 1st and 2nd Edition at the end of this post.