IFFI 53, 2022, 04: Makes history with first feature film to have only indigenous cast  She rises from the ashes, to fearlessly proclaim the exclusive right she has over her body and the decisions involving it. Dhabari Quruvi is an elevating story of girls belonging to a tribal community in Kerala, and is the first film in the history of Indian cinema to star only people from indigenous communities. Directed by National Award-winning film-maker Priyanandan, the film also has the distin...

The Scorched Forest-Part I-The Kindling, Review: The Killing Fields A twenty-one years old man, whose father died in an accident, is at the bottom end of the class pyramid. Living in abject poverty, he, his mother and sister, work as daily-wage labourers and have a huge debt to repay to a money-lender. The ‘man’ of the house chops (removes) harmful thorns from the plants and trees in a field, for a paltry sum, which is barely enough to help keep the kitchen fires burning. This beg...

Trailer success meet and song launch of Major: Lookout, big fish, here comes the goldfish Three big, real BIG pictures are on the verge of release, simultaneously. Two are from the South, and one from Mumbai. Anybody who has been following release schedules will know that these three are Prithviraj from Yash Raj Films, KamalHaasan’s Vikram and a major film from Hyderabad, called, Major. I wonder whether the other two have been shown to anybody except the most selected of selective audie...

Patrick Morell presents a superbly photographed documentation of the Teyyam rituals. These rituals have been performed for thousands of years, in hundreds of  locations, in India’s Northern Kerala.  Through Teyyam rituals, devotees’ bond with their gods, goddesses, heroes, and ancestors. Teyyam rituals have re-established a direct personalized relationship between the believers and their gods, a connection disrupted by Western organized religion. As the philosopher Martin...

Minnal Murali, Review: Two bolts from the blue Minnal Murali’s première at the Mumbai Film Festival, on 16 December, was a grand affair. The venue was the recently constructed Jio World Drive in Mumbai’s Bandra-Kurla Complex, and drinks and snacks were waiting for those who arrived early. The cast and crew were present too. Viewing the film came with an embargo that no reviews should be posted before December the 24th, the day of its release directly through the streaming p...

16th Third Eye Asian Film Festival: III Of the 10 feature films screened at the 16th Third Eye Asian Film Festival (TEAFF) during the first three days, I caught four and opted out of a fifth because I had seen it, albeit decades ago. Two of these were Indian, one Egyptian and one from Taiwan-Myanmar. Ziprya, based on the Arun Sadhu novel and chosen as the inaugural film, was big let-down. Made in amateurish style, full of tropes and stock screenplay, it did great disservice to the memory of ...

THE 10th International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK) gets under way this evening (Friday December 09, 2005) with the promise of record-breaking attendance following a new surge of interest in pure cinema here. Officials told filmfestivals.com they expect last year’s figure of 6,300 delegates to be surpassed, despite the fact that the budget for organizing, running and promoting the festival has remained more or less the same for the past three years. Some 180 titles, including 1...

HOTELS are filling up and local people are beginning to get excited at the prospect of this year’s event, the 10th International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK), which will open here 24 hours from now (08 December, 2005). US$32,000 to be awarded in the 10-day event The Kerala festival takes place in Trivandrum just a couple of hours drive from the southernmost tip of this vast continent. Kerala is one of the country’s 28 states and boasts one of the most cine-literate and discer...