മലയാള സിനിമ OTT വഴി ഇന്ത്യയിലുടനീളമുള്ള നഗരങ്ങളിലെ ഉന്നതർക്ക് എത്തുന്ന ഈ കാലത്ത്, മലയാള സിനിമകളെ വളരെക്കാലമായി ആസ്വദിച്ചിട്ടുള്ള ഗൾഫ് കുടിയേറ്റക്കാർക്കിടയിലെ പ്രദേശാന്തര കാഴ്ച്ചക്കാരെ നാം മറക്കുന്നു.[…]
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Tag: cinema
Watching ‘Malabari Films’ in Bihar: Gulf Migration and Transregional Connections
Even as OTT brings Malayalam cinema to urban elites across India, we forget the transregional viewership that Malayalam cinema has long enjoyed among Gulf migrants. Drawing from his own life, Nehal reflects on how Malayalam cinema speaks to the Bihari Gulf migrant experience.
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The Holy Family Severed: Kaathal’s Reconstitution of the Heteronormative Family in Malayalam Cinema
The recently released film, Kaathal, has ignited public discussions of gender and sexuality in Kerala. But to what extent does it subvert Kerala’s norms around family, caste, and class? Sandra Elizabeth Joseph reflects.
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Scary Spaces: Technology and Horror in Chathurmukham
The ways in which we have come to negotiate with the presence of technology in our lives are multiple and varied. Himaganga revisits the 2021 Malayalam film Chathurmukham to see how the techno-horror genre represents some of the anxieties that surround the pervasiveness of media devices in our everyday lives.
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Kerala’s Painkili Romance with Pulp Fiction
Pulp fiction in Kerala remains a genre that does not receive much attention, despite the significant role it has played in cultivating a reading culture in Kerala. Serialised novels in Malayalam weeklies had readers hooked for decades. Shibu B S delves into the rich world of painkili (‘songbird’) novels in Kerala.
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[Podcast] Rethinking ‘Keraleeyatha’: Behind the Malayalam Cinema ‘Brand’
With streaming services bringing transnational attention to Malayalam cinema, it becomes important to examine the nature of Kerala’s “new gen” cinema and to locate it in a longer history. C S Venkiteswaran, film critic, Don Palathara, film director, and Jolly Chirayath, actor, feature in Ala’s first audio essay on cinema in Kerala.
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The Ecology of Purushapretham (2023)
Purushapretham has been among this year’s most intriguing releases so far, seeming like a police procedural at the outset but revealing hidden depths. Deepti delves into how the director draws viewers into a complex ecology of human and nonhuman actors, marking an exciting addition to the emergent ‘cli-fi’ genre in Malayalam cinema.
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Performing the Vernacular and Absorbing the Standard: Mammootty, Language and Performance
How does Mammootty’s linguistic prowess enable him to move from being the Muslim “other” to an embodiment of the “standard” Malayalee man? Afeef Ahmed analyses the multiple ways by which Mammootty, both as an actor and an individual, negotiates his identity and selfhood through language.
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[Podcast] Rethinking ‘Keraleeyatha’: Archiving Kozhikode’s Many Musics
In this episode, Ala’s Deepti Sreeram speaks with Sudha Padmaja Francis, an award-winning independent documentary filmmaker about her practice as a filmmaker and her documentary Ormajeevikal, a film that captures the city of Kozhikode through a community of music lovers
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കെ.ആർ.നാരായണൻ നാഷണൽ ഫിലിം ഇൻസ്റ്റിറ്റ്യൂട്ടിൽ എന്താണ് സംഭവിച്ചത് ?
കെ ആർ നാരായണൻ ഇൻസ്റ്റിറ്റിയൂട്ടിൽ നടന്ന വിദ്യാർത്ഥി സമരം എങ്ങനെയാണു ഒരു ബദൽ ജ്ഞാനരൂപം നിർമിക്കുന്നതെന്നു കുഞ്ഞുണ്ണി സജീവ് എഴുതുന്നു.
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