Uttaran Das Gupta

Fathers, sons and man-made monsters: Is AI going to be the next Creature?

'The Apprentice' and 'Frankenstein' are deep meditations on misguided mentorship and vengeful prodigies

Ritwik Ghatak: An unparalleled auteur of provocation, displacement

In the centenary of his birth, Ritwik Ghatak continues to provoke us with the disquieting narratives in his small oeuvre of films

Big countries, little people: Indian diaspora as seen in Bollywood films

As we celebrate the 30th anniversary of the iconic Bollywood film 'Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge', the Indian diaspora that it had wooed is in troubled waters

Frames per Second: The billionaire as a common man in a world of ambition

Shah Rukh Khan is India's richest actor now, but one of his early films, 'Raju Ban Gaya Genteman', was a nuanced critique of ambition and the pursuit of wealth

Frames per Second: Bollywood's stars, disposable bodies and price of fame

Aryan Khan's directorial debut, 'The Ba***ds of Bollywood', is a celebration of the Hindi film industry's clannish rituals

Frames per Second: Meet Uttam Kumar, the 'Nayak' of Bengal cinema

As we enter the 100th year of the matinee idol, it is important to revisit his legacy without falling into the lure of nostalgia

Frames per second: Fun and games, from Satyajit Ray and Wes Anderson

Wes Anderson presenting a restored version of Satyajit Ray's 1970 film Aranyer Din Ratri at Cannes is a fitting tribute from an admirer to a master

A history of exclusion: Rewatching Jabbar Patel's 'Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar'

The controversy over 'Phule', the recent biopic of Jyotirao and Savitribhai Phule, raises concerns over film censorship in India

The new bad boy of B-town: Aurangzeb joins Gabbar and Mogambo in infamy

The sixth Mughal emperor, Aurangazeb, is the hot villain in Indian cinema now. But what do our favourite villains say about us?

Stealing bread: How Deewaar reimagined an episode from Les Miserables

Not surprisingly, rewatching Deewaar now is still an enriching experience

Frames per second: Revisiting nostalgia, Emergency, and lost revolutions

The 2003 film, Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi, recreated the revolutionary fervour of the 1970s and the Emergency - albeit with a strong tinge of nostalgia

The urge to throw a stone

In Payal Kapadia's All We Imagine As Light, the symbolic protest of two working-class women echoes a rich and radical tradition in Indian cinema

Kolkata trams, now on their way out, inspired city's best-known filmmakers

Now that there will be fewer trams on the city's streets, it will not only be an ecological loss but also an aesthetic and political one

Frames per second: Why are audiences loving re-released Bollywood films?

Looking backwards while going forward can prove to be a tricky business

Hamare Baarah and Maharaj: To watch or not to watch

Heckler's veto or preventing harm? Censoring films that cause offence opens up a can of worms

Frames per second: The churning and the counting

Watching the restored version of the 1976 film Manthan reminds one of the Emergency but also gives hope for a renewed democracy

Amar Singh Chamkila: Bawdy songs and radical obscenity

An accusation of obscenity is usually not an attempt to control prurient art but to limit its radical potential

The plague as a metaphor

Laxmibai Tilak, a contemporary writer, recounts how plague camps, where patients were quarantined, were 'kingdoms of the god of death'

Frames per second: War films as revenge drama

Earlier, Bollywood war flicks were about defending India's borders. Now, they are all about vengeance

Crouching tiger, rising mammoth

Historian Sugata Bose, in his new book, makes a compelling case for Asia to embrace its political, cultural, and economic diversity as it reclaims its centrality in the world