Offering new possibilities in reading film soundscapes, Namita assembles an illustrative archive to discuss how Malayalam cinema employs Carnatic music to “legitimise” bodies otherwise deemed subaltern.
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Tag: performance arts
നിലതെറ്റിയ നർത്തകികൾ: മോഹിനിയാട്ടത്തിന്റെ ഭൂതവും വർത്തമാനവും
ജീവിച്ചിരിക്കുന്ന പരമ്പാരാഗത മോഹിനിയാട്ട നർത്തകിമാരുടെ ഓർമ്മകളും അവർ നേരിട്ട വിവേചനവും കൈചൂണ്ടുന്നത് സങ്കീർണ്ണമായ ഒരു ചരിത്രത്തിലേക്കാണ്. ഒരു കലാരൂപം എന്നതിനുപരി, നർത്തകിമാരുടെ സാമൂഹിക–ജാതിപദവികളുടെ പശ്ചാത്തലത്തിൽ മനസ്സിലാക്കേണ്ടതാണ് ഈ ചരിത്രം എന്ന് അമിത്ത് എഴുതുന്നു.
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Exclusion in Plain Sight: Representations of ‘Folk’ Dance in Kerala’s Arts Festivals
‘Nadodi nruttham’ is an omnipresent cultural form in Kerala’s arts festival spaces. Drawing from her ongoing research into youth festivals in Kerala, Rajashree Raju delves into the caste dynamics behind a form that represents itself as ‘folk’.
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Moral Spectacles: Theatre, Caste, and Gender in The Svadeshabhimani
Editorials about women in public theatre in The Svadeshabhimani give us important clues about am emerging caste-gender order.
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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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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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‘ചിത്ര’- മോഹിനിയാട്ടവേദിയിലെ നവീനമുഖം
അമിത്തിന്റെ ചിത്ര എന്ന മോഹിനിയാട്ട അവതരണം ജെൻഡർ വാർപ്പ് മാതൃകകളെ ചോദ്യം ചെയ്യുന്നതെങ്ങനെയെന്നു രൂപിമ എഴുതുന്നു.
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Nanjiyamma and The Soundscape of Ayyappanum Koshiyum
Jaya Thampi revisits Sachy’s Ayyappanum Koshiyum (2020) to explore its cinematic soundscape and the many lives of Nanjiyamma’s songs in and beyond the film.
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The Magical Realism of Kummatty (1979)
With renewed global interest in G. Aravindan’s 1979 film, Kummatty, Amal Nath Rajeevan revisits the film to examine the elements of magical realism that imbues it with timeless cinematic pleasure.
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Waiting for Mass in Malayalam Cinema
The idea of a ‘mass film’ is an eminently recognisable one in south India, but just what is it? How do we make sense of the aesthetics and feelings that make fans say, ‘nalla mass padam’, and just why is it missing in some recent Malayalam films? Arjun Ramachandran writes.
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