Comments on: Hazaroon Kranti

By: Sohail

Sohail — Sun, 05 Feb 2006 16:53:38 +0000

Another good movie on Naxalites is “Hazar chaurasi ki maan” (mother of 1084) by Givind Nihalani. It also reminded me of my teen infatuation of communism.

By: prachi

prachi — Wed, 01 Feb 2006 14:50:55 +0000

it is true; we are never too far from our real and potential syllabi! Now am really bummed out that I couldn’t see it at the NYC desi film fest a while ago. off to see if Netflix has it…
we could also have a more general discussion at the sourcebook as well, no, about how we might usefully integrate films into surveys?
And no post about the series win?

By: eteraz

eteraz — Wed, 01 Feb 2006 05:54:04 +0000

weren’t you supposed to be working on becoming a masket super-hero? the presence of a post caught me off-guard. glad to have it though. thanks for the comment on my blog the other day.

razzaq 86, iqbal 139 - 595/5.

By: sepoy

sepoy — Tue, 31 Jan 2006 19:04:06 +0000

Cressida: I haven’t read much [or heard about] this film, so thanks for the link. As for where the oppressed peasants and the subalterns were…that, to me, was the biggest in-joke.

By: Cressida

Cressida — Tue, 31 Jan 2006 18:16:48 +0000

Hurrah, another watcher of this movie. I confess the memory is a bit hazy as I saw it nearly a year ago, sometime in the spring when I was in Delhi.

I admit, I was, well, left a little flat. It was a movie which promised so much; from high gloss posters (– a kind of super-gloss in black and red that perhaps should have warned me!) to covering all kinds of fascinating ground. As a European it was fascinating to watch the 70s as seen from DU to the Emergency - usually so utterly blanked out in mainstream media. It was visually rich - and full of in-jokes - us Delhiites (temporary and permanent) kept nudging each other at references to people and places; I’ve not been able to think of Sanjay Gandhi the same since.
But…
…the English dialogue was frankly clunky (my ear isn’t sharp enough for the Hindi), it flagged/grated at times. It seemed a bit like an in-joke to have the judges son as the Naxal, the Ghandian’s property dealer son was far more real. And amidst all of this film where were the people all these struggles were supposed to be about? Rural Biharis just appeared massified; vicious caste violence and oppressed peasant to be saved by radical minded middle classes. It seemed much like the Marxist manifesto type that Sudhir Mishra talks about in a Hindu interview: http://www.hindu.com/mag/2005/05/08/stories/2005050800220500.htm A conversation followed about whether this was the problem with activism in general. Maybe it was that that left me flat. Or‚Ä¶maybe I need to watch it again

By: raven

raven — Tue, 31 Jan 2006 17:19:45 +0000

I saw it at Kara and it was AMAZING! Mishra was there to answer questions afterwards.

Also featured at Kara: Mein nay Gandhi ko nahi mara. Highly recommended.