HUM AAPKE HAIN KOUN…!

1994 206’ col/scope Hindi

d/sc/dial Sooraj Barjatya pc Rajshri Prod. p Kamal Kumar Barjatya st Keshav Prasad Mishra, S.H. Athavale lyr Ravinder Rawal, Dev Kohli c Rajan Kinagi m Raamlaxman

lp Madhuri Dixit, Salman Khan, Anupam Kher, Renuka Shahane, Reema Lagoo, Alok Nath, Satish Shah, Bindu, Mohnish Bahl, Laxmikant Berde, Ajit Vachani

Promoted as the most successful Indian film ever, the plot concerns the arranged marriage between Rajesh (Bahl), nephew and heir to the industrial empire of Kailashnath (Nath), and Pooja (Shahane), daughter of the equally rich Professor Choudhury (Kher). Most of the 3-hour film is devoted to a series of festivities with parties in the Ram temple and at the homes of the two families, one chronicling the marriage itself and another when Pooja is pregnant. Prem (Khan), Rajesh’s younger brother, falls in love with Pooja’s sister Nisha (Dixit). The elaborate entertainment of an ostentatious North Indian wedding with its enormous consumption of food is also the scene of the mandatory pranks played upon each other by the ‘younger generation’ led by Prem and Nisha, their sexual and voyeuristic overtones sanctioned, even at times replicated (e.g. in the song Saamne samdhan hai) by the older generation. Both families, including Kailashnath’s cook (Berde), are free of any traces of class or gender conflict in the film’s celebration of a fantasy in which unbridled consumerism and religiosity combine without problems. The especially dominant food motif is stressed by the song ‘Ice Cream Chocolate’, sung by Lata Mangeshkar, and illustrated by large advertising posters in Nisha’s room. The only exception to the general religio-consumerist bliss is a fussy and generally disliked aunt (Bindu), who insists on mentioning issues such as the dowry and class differences, for which she gets slapped by her husband (Vachani). Pooja’s moving into Kailashnath’s home leads to utopia itself, blessed by her religiosity (she prays to the gods Krishna and Rama, both of whom actively intervene into the story). However, all this is interrupted when Pooja falls down a flight of stairs and dies. To restore the situation, the families decide that Nisha will marry the widowed Rajesh, but the happy ending, and a second marriage, arrives only when the dog Tuffy, an incarnation of Krishna, becomes the instrument for revealing that Nisha loves the younger brother, Prem. This remake of Rajshri’s far from successful earlier Nadiya Ke Paar (1982) proved to be an astonishing success as has the effectiveness of its marketing as a ‘clean’ family film. It is arguable that the fantasy of a feudal elite that has successfully negotiated its transition to capitalism while retaining its allegedly ‘traditional’ religiosity underpins an appeal to the audience’s voyeurism as well as to a devotional fervour hitherto reserved for explicitly religiously themes.

Madhuri Dixit and Salman Khan in Hum Aapke Hain Koun…!

KADHALAN

1994 168’ col/scope Tamil

d/s/co-lyr Shankar pc A.R.S. Films p K.T. Kunjumon dial Balakumaran lyr Vairamuthu, Vali c Jeeva m A.R. Rehman

lp Prabhu Deva, Naghma, Girish Karnad, Vadivelu, Raghuvaran, S.P. Balasubramanyam

Tamil megabit and trendsetter continuing the 90s phenomenon of big budget musicals, associated mainly with composer Rehman, reaching an audience far exceeding the traditional scope of ‘regional’ cinemas. The film established the breakdancing Prabhu Deva, known until then mainly as a choreographer (e.g. the Rukmini song in Roja, 1992). He plays Prabhu, the son of a policeman (Balasubramanyam) and a student leader who falls in love with Shruti (Naghma). daughter of Kakarla Satyanarayana, the corrupt Governor of Tamil Nadu (Karnad). The reference is evidently to Tamil Nadu’s controversial governor M. Chenna Reddy, who had a public feud with the state Chief Minister Jayalalitha (to whom the film is dedicated). The love story develops alongside the Governor’s nefarious plans to bomb various public places. From the opening number, ‘Take it easy Urvashi’, set partly in an illuminated glass vehicle, the film announces its ‘postmodern’ intentions using computer-aided animation and elaborate special effects as well as costumed dance numbers, all of which set the stage for numerous comments on contemporary politics and the new mass culture. The heroine, resembling sketches from a book on traditional norms of Indian beauty, falls out with her beloved when his breakdancing comes into conflict with her devotion to the Bharat Natyam dance form. During their motor-cycle escapade to the temple town of Chidambaram, they foil the Governor’s plan to bomb the place, after which the hero is incarcerated and tortured by a female cop. His release triggers a wild west dance number and the film’s megabit, Mukkala muqabala. The film makes several references to earlier Tamil hits (e.g. to the Roja star Aravind Swamy) and Prabhu on one occasion pretends to be N.T. Rama Rao (leading to an extract from the latter’s Lavakusa, 1963).

Dubbed versions of the film in Telugu (Premikudu, 1994) and Hindi (Humse Hai Muqabala, 1995) were also hits, esp. Rehman’s songs. Hindi lyrics were by P.K. Mishra. Tejaswini Niranjana and Vivek Dhareshwar analysed the film in ‘Kadhalan and the Politics of Resignification: Fashion, Violence and the Body’ (1995).

KARUTHAMMA

1994 153’ col/scope Tamil

d/sc Bharthirajaa pc Vetrivel Art Creations st/dial M. Rathnakumar lyr Vairamuthu c B. Kannan m A.R. Rehman

lp Raja, Rajashree, Periyadhasan, Maheshwari, Rajina

Remarkable Bharthirajaa melodrama addressing the feudal practice of female infanticide in parts of Tamil Nadu. The school teacher Soosai secretly adopts the third daughter of the villager Mokkaiyan (Periyadhasan) when he learns that she is to die. The two elder daughters, Periyakanni and Karuthamma (Rajashree), grow up to a tragic fate. Periyakanni is unhappily married and sees her own daughter killed at birth. Karuthamma, however, gets her sister’s evil husband arrested for the act, supported by the progressive veterinarian Stephen (Raja). In the end, when the evil husband is released from jail, Karuthamma kills him. A second plot has Karuthamma fall in love with Stephen to the envy of his urban girlfriend Rosy (Maheshwari), who eventually turns out to be the surviving third sister of Karuthamma. The film’s opening sets the tone as an ancient nurse sings a lullaby in a cracked voice, preparing to feed poisoned cactus milk to girls who have to die. The director, enhancing his selfmade image of social reformer, introduces the film. Nevertheless, he occasionally achieves surprisingly tragic, primitive realism, strengthened by Rehman’s extraordinary song Poraleponnu thayi.

KOCHANIYAN

1994 106’ col Malayalam

d/co-s Satheesh Venganoor p Itihas Films p Bushura Shahudeen co-s A. Shahudeen c V. Aravindakshan m Mohan Sitara

lp Master Vineeth, Narendra Prasad, Maya Uthradamthirunal, A. Shahudeen, Baby Surendran

Malayalam children’s movie in which the young protagonist Kochunni (Vineeth) has problems with his disciplinarian father and sibling rivalry with elder sister Suma. He retaliates with some nasty pranks, while his grandmother’s tales provide an escape into private fantasies. The grandmother dies and the boy’s girlfriend, Nazima, moves away. He falls ill and, in the end, is reconciled with his distraught parents. Much of the film lovingly photographs the lifestyle of a traditional Nair family coming to terms with capitalist modernity, breaking out only with an elaborately shot dream sequence in which Kochunni imagines his tyrannical father in Kathakali costume.

KOTTRESHI KANASU

aka Kottresbi’s Dream

1994 133’ col Kannada

d/s Nagathi Halli Chandrasekhar pc Vishwapriya Films p G. Nandakumar st Veerabhadrappa lyr H.S. Venkatesha Murthy c Sunny Joseph m C. Aswath

lp Vijaya Raghavendra, Umashree, Kari Basavaiah, B. Jayashree

Sentimental story in which the Dalit (untouchable) Kottara (Raghavendra), the most intelligent boy in his class, struggles to overcome caste oppression. Most of the acting and narrative style is declamatory in line with the film’s avowed reformist purpose.

KRANTIVEER

1994 159’ col/scope Hindi

d/p Mehul Kumar pc Mehul Movies s K.K. Singh lyr Sameer c Russi Bilimoria m Anand Milind

lp Nana Patekar, Dimple Kapadia, Atul Agnihotri, Mamta Kulkarni, Paresh Rawal, Tinnu Anand, Danny Denzongpa, Farida Jalal

Local Maharashtrian ‘anti-hero’ Patekar expands his vigilante image (cf. Ankush, 1985; Prahaar, 1992) into his first big-budget, solo star vehicle. He plays Pratap, the wayward grandson of a Gandhian nationalist. Evicted from his house for dishonesty, which caused the death of his grandfather, he grows up and collects rent for a slum-owner (Rawal), maintaining a fervent contempt for legality and a belief in the basic rightness of taking the law into one’s own hands, an ideology repeatedly endorsed in the film. From this perspective he takes on the might of the corrupt builder Yograj (Anand) and the gang boss Cheetah (Denzongpa). In the end, sentenced to death, he delivers, directly to camera, a spine-chilling harangue ostensibly in favour of communal harmony, but in fact directly invoking the language associated with the Shiv Sena leader Bal Thackeray (cf. Anand Patwardhan’s Father, Son and Holy War, 1994). The film uses the fearless journalist Megha Dixit (Kapadia), raped in the film by Cheetah, to reinforce its basic message that Pratap’s lumpen-brutalism, directly connected with Shiv Sena gangsterism, is the legitimate inheritor of the nationalist freedom struggle. It also continues director Mehul Kumar’s previous odes to macho posturing (Tiranga, 1992). The song Love rap, picturised on romantic lead Agnihotri and Kulkarni, assisted the film’s ominous success.

KUDUMBA VISESHAM

1994 150’ col Malayalam

d Anil Babu p Habib Abdul Khader sc J. Palassery lyr Bichu Thirumala c Ramchandra Babu m Johnson

lp Thilakan, Kaviyoor Ponnamma, Jagadish, Shanti Krishna

Middle-class melodrama showcasing two veteran Malayalam actors, Thilakan and Ponnamma. He is Madhavan Nair, an ageing taxi driver, head of a large joint family; she plays his wife. The complicated tale shows ingratitude and financial machinations, old feuds and fragmenting marital ties, ending when the old man’s wife dies and he disowns his entire family.

LUBEIDAK

aka The Necklace

1994 95’ col Desia

d/s P.L. Das p Sushanta Kumar Adhikari lyr Ashok Mishra c Niranjan Dash m Satyanarayan Adhikari

lp Hanu Dulari, Satya Mishra, Premalata Dash, Rabi Panda, Naba Panda

Ethnographic fiction film set among the Bondo tribals in the remote Malkangiri district of Orissa. The Bondos are still outside of the national mainstream, and believed (in the colonial classification of Indian tribes) to be homicidal savages. The film features several members of the tribe and tells the story of Lachhim, a tribal who has won a national reputation in archery, who returns to find his reformist efforts thwarted by the villain Mangla as political reform takes on the tones of sexual rivalry. The non-naturalism of the untrained actors (many of whom have been largely unexposed even to viewing cinema) clashes interestingly at times with a documentary-like camera style, but often appears simply awkward.

MAGALIR MATTUM

1994 132’ col Tamil

d Singeetham Srinivasa Rao pc Rajkamal Film Intl., st Kamalahasan sc/dial ‘Crazy’ Mohan lyr Vali c Thirunavukkarasu m Ilaiyaraja

lp Urvashi, Rohini, Revathi, Nasser, Nagesh, Vijay, Sathya, Kamalahasan

Kamalahasan-scripted comedy based generally on Colin Higgins’ 9 to 5 (1980) shows three working women in a garment factory take revenge on their tyrannical employer. Pandian (Nasser) makes repeated sexual advances to Janaki, the office typist (Urvashi in the Dolly Parton role) and Papamma, the maid servant (Rohini). On his side is Madhavi (Sathya). When a new costume designer Sathya (Revathi) arrives, she decides to put an end to this exploitation. The three of them get their employer in an accident, and later kidnap him in the company guest house while reforming the office with new facilities including a creche. In the end, the young boss from the head office (Kamalahasan) sacks Pandian and Madhavi, makes Sathya the new head and proposes marriage to her.

MAMMO

1994 124’ col Hindi

d Shyam Benegal pc NFDC st/co-sc Khalid Mohamed co-sc Shama Zaidi dial Javed Siddiqui lyr Gulzar c Prasann Jain m Vanraj Bhatia

lp Farida Jalal, Surekha Sikri, Amit Phalke, Himani Shivpuri, Rajit Kapoor

Benegal’s melodrama addresses the condition of Muslim refugees in Bombay, an issue made relevant by the Hindu Shiv Sena’s attacks on minorities in the city as alleged ‘Pakistanis’. Mammo, aka Mahmood Begum (Jalal), arrives in Bombay unannounced to stay with her sister Fayyazi (Sikri) and the latter’s orphaned grandson Riyaz (Phalke). She was evicted from her marital home in Lahore after her husband’s death. Arriving on a temporary visitor’s visa, she tries legally as well as through bribery to convert the visa into one enabling permanent residence, asserting her right to stay on as an Indian national. The story is told through the eyes of Riyaz, who initially resents her arrival in their cramped Bombay flat. Mammo is deported, but returns in the end, hopefully for good.

Surekha Sikri in Mammo

MANATHE VELLITHERU

1994 140’ col/scope Malayalam

d/s Fazil pc Khais Prod. p Khais lyr Shibu Chakravarthy c Ananthakuttan m Johnson

lp Shobhana, Vineeth, Mukesh, Srinivasan, Lalu Alex, Lakshmi

Malayalam star Shobhana plays pop singer Merlin Fernandes whose music combines rustic tradition with modern rhythms to entertain the Malayali diaspora throughout India. Ramesh (Vineeth), a psychotically devoted fan, follows her wherever she goes, investing all his time and his considerable wealth into attempts to seduce her. Desperate to escape her stalker, she marries a wealthy businessman. Ramesh now vows to kill the couple before committing suicide. Eventually, the cop (Mukesh) investigating the situation unearths Ramesh’s tragic psycho-biography, enabling him - with assistance from Merlin and her husband - to cure the stalker of his ‘mother fixation’. The film echoes Yash Chopra’s megahit Darr (1993) with Vineeth doing a credible follow-up to Shah Rukh Khan’s earlier portrayal of Ramesh.

MAYOPHY GEE MACHA

aka Mayophy’s Son

1994 92’ col Meiteilon-Manipuri

d Oken Amakcham pc P.K. Films p Thouyangba, Thoungamba s M.K. Binodini Devi lyr Th. Kora c Sarat m N. Tiken

lp Makhon Mani, R.S. Joycee, Narendra Ningomba, Pishak, Bimola, Master Nongyai

Melodrama about three women from the Tangkhul community in the Manipuri hills. The story is told in flashback after a young girl, the daughter of Mayophy raised by her widowed grandmother, writes to the narrator having been selected to represent India in the Asian Games. The three women evoke the pristine, mountainous landscape even as they encounter modernity and urbanisation. The language is a tribal dialect of Manipuri.

MEEMANXA

aka The Verdict

1994 122’ col Assamese

d Sanjib Hazarika pc Nirmali Arts, Narayanpur p Jayanta Hazarika, Mahadeb Borkotoky st Nirupama Borgohain sc Ranjit Sharma c Mrinalkanti Das m Sher Choudhury

lp Monami Bezbarua, Arun Nath, Narmada Das Devi, Bidyut Chakraborty, Indra Bania, Tilak Das, Kuki Hazarika, Nikumani Barua

Miserabilist tale set in the Assamese countryside of the widowed Sushila’s (Bezbarua) futile search for justice when the evil Zamindar Harekrishna (Sharma) rapes her. Harekrishna in turn accuses her of arson. Her troubles continue when she is bailed out by the businessman Bishnu (Chakraborty) in return for becoming his sexual ‘property’. Eventually, she is rescued by Harekrishna’s weak assistant (Nath), who loved her but was unable to stand up to his evil master. The director is a former playwright and actor (eg. Agnisnan, 1985) who made one earlier feature, Haladhar (1992).

Monami Bezbarua in Meemanxa (1994)

MINNARAM

1994 150’ col Malayalam

d/s Priyadarshan pc Goodknight Films lyr Girish Puthencheri c Anand m S.P. Venkatesh

lp Mohanlal, Shobhana, Thilakan. Venu Nagavalli

Sentimental comedy adapting the well-known plot of a friendly governess who tames a bunch of spoilt brats. The orphaned Bobby (Mohanlal) lives with his uncle (Thilakan), a former jail superintendent who is also guardian to his widower-brother’s five children. Bobby and the kids have a great time leading unruly lives until Neena (Shobhana), a governess hired by the uncle, arrives. Bobby first encourages the children to revolt against her, but she wins them over and gets them to turn against Bobby instead.

MOGHA MULL

1994 137’ col/scope Tamil

d/s Gnana Rajasekharan pc J.R. Circuit

p J. Dharmambal st T. Janaki Raman’s novel lyr Vali c Sunny Joseph, Thangar Bachan m Ilaiyaraja

lp Nedumudi Venu, Abhishek, Archana Joglekar, Soorya

The former bureaucrat Rajasekharan’s debut feature is an Ilaiyaraja-derived pop phantasy about India’s classical heritage. The genre usually features tragedies of unrequited love and how women are crucial to the creative muse of infantile geniuses. The film is set in the 1950s in feudal Tanjore. Babu, ten years younger than the unmarriageable Yamuna, is seduced by his voluptuous neighbour Thankamma, but he rejects her subsequent advances, causing her to commit suicide. This then enables Babu to find his true vocation as a musician under the tutelage of master Ranganna (Venu), as well as his true love and muse, Yamuna. The music, aesthetically resistant to the commercialism which besets the film, is emplotted into the crisis when Babu is forced to ‘sell’ it in order to raise money for his dying teacher. His failure in maintaining his incorruptibility forces him onto the streets of Madras, whence he is rescued by Yamuna who reinflates his musical genius.

MOHRA

1994 177’ col/scope Hindi

d/s/e Rajiv Rai pc Trimurti Films p Gulshan Rai co-sc Shabbir Boxwalla dial Dilip Shukla lyr Anand Bakshi, Indivar c Damodar Naidu m Viju Shah

lp Naseeruddin Shah, Akshay Kumar, Sunil Shetty, Raveena Tandon, Pononam Jhawar, Raza Murad, Paresh Rawal, Gulshan Grover, Sadashiv Amrapurkar

Vishal Agnihotri (Shetty), jailed for having murdered his wife’s rapists and killers, is rescued when the journalist Roma Singh (Tandon) reveals the truth. Roma’s employer, the blind publisher Jindal (Shah), hires Vishal to kill the gangsters Gibran (Murad) and Tyson (Grover). The fearless policeman Amar Saxena (Kumar), who is after the same gangsters, arrests Vishal. Eventually it emerges that Jindal is the main criminal and mastermind, and Amar joins forces with Vishal to get him in a climax providing considerable exposure to both stars’ much touted training in the martial arts. The film features the major hit song Tu cheez badi hai mast mast, an unacknowledged adaptation of Nusrat Fateh Ali’s Mast kalandar mast mast.

MUKTA

aka The Liberated Woman

1994 154’ col Marathi

d/s Jabbar Patel pc Sarala Pics p Ashok Mhatre dial Sanjay Pawar lyr N.D. Manohar, Jonaci Patel c Shankar Bardhan m Anand Modak

lp Sonali Kulkarni, Avinash Narkar, Shriram Lagoo, Reema Lagoo, Vikram Gokhale, Caleb Obura Obwatinyka, Madhu Kambikar, Prashant Subedar

Wordy melodrama suggesting a link between the condition of Dalit ‘untouchable’ castes in Maharashtra and the lot of African-Americans (the Dalit Panther movement in 1970s-80s Maharashtra had expressed support for the Black Panthers). Mukta (Kulkarni), daughter of a US-based Marathi poet (Gokhale), returns to her ancestral village to complete her education. At university she joins a street theatre group of Dalit activists and falls in love with the group’s leader (Narkar). The group attacks governmental indifference to violence against Dalit women and Mukta’s participation severely embarasses her uncle, a State Minister in the ruling Congress Party. The ‘local’ problem, posed by Mukta’s Westernised liberatedness, escalates into a new dimension when her black American friend (Obwatinyka) visits her, leading briefly to a love triangle. In the end, the divides in the family as Mukta’s parents prefer to split the joint family rather than curtail her right to decide her own future, are mapped onto new political allegiences. The unusual twist in the plot comes when the American youth accompanies Mukta’s grandfather (S. Lagoo) on a pilgrimage to Pandharpur, recalling the Marathi Saint poets’ struggle against caste inequalities, and sings black songs while urging the old man to recognise the intensely contemporary nature of race and caste discrimination.

NAMMAVAR

1994 178’(163’) col/scope Tamil

d K.S. Sethumadhavan pc Vijaya-Vauhini, aka Chandamama Vijaya Combines p P. Venkatrama Reddy dial Kanmani Subbu lyr Vairamuthu c Madhu Ambat m Mahesh

lp Kamalahasan, Gauthami, Karan, Thayi Nagesh, Brinda

The punk villain Ramesh (Karan) is the leading thug in Shaktivel College where student violence has caused chaos. Order is restored by the new professor, Selvan (Kamalahasan). The best moments in the film are the spontaneous-looking scenes of intimacy between Selvan and his colleague Vasanthi (Gauthami), and the musical contest when the professor and his students, whose musical instruments have been destroyed by the villain, perform a full number entirely with natural sound effects. The script credits were withheld, apparently after Kamalahasan’s extensive informal contributions had transformed the story. Veteran Tamil actor Nagesh makes a remarkable cameo appearance as the father of Nirmala (Brinda), a college student killed by Ramesh.

1942: A LOVE STORY

1994 ? col/scope Hindi

d/p/co-s Vidhu Vinod Chopra pc Vinod Chopra Prod. co-st/dial Kaamna Chandra co-s Shiv Subrahmanyam, Sanjay Bhansali lyr Javed Akhtar c Binod Pradhan m R.D. Burman

lp Anil Kapoor, Manisha Koirala, Jackie Shroff, Anupam Kher, Danny Denzongpa, Manohar Singh, Sushma Seth, Chandni, Brian Glover, Pran Sikand, Raghuvir Yadav

A love story set amid the Quit India agitations during WW2. In the Himalayan foothills, the blundering, apolitical Naren (Kapoor) falls in love with the local girl Rajjo (Koirala). Since his father (Singh) is committed to colonial rule, while her father is a revolutionary terrorist, their love affair leads to the exposure of a terrorist plot to assassinate the evil British General Douglas (Glover), modelled on popular versions of General Dyer of the Jallianwala Bagh tragedy. Eventually, Naren joins the terrorists led by Shubhankar (Shroff) and, in a long drawn-out climax, achieves the deed and leads a popular revolt against the colonial power. The film, with at times remarkable camerawork revealing its New Indian Cinema antecedents, contributes to the major 90s revival of ‘nationalist’ themes, recalling the values of the Independence struggle (cf. Mani Rathnam’s work), even enjoining the audience to stand up for the national anthem which closes the performance. Its enormously successful music was released after the death of the composer Burman.

Manisha Koirala and Anil Kapoor in 1942: A Love Story

NIRBACHANA

1994 107’ col Oriya

d/sc Biplab Roy Choudhury pc NFDC st Prafulla Roy dial Hrishikesh Panda c Raju Mishra m Shantanu Mahapatra

lp Bhim Singh, Bidyut Prava Patnaik, Durlabh Chandra Singh, Sangeeta Dutta, Sasmita Jagdeb

Roy Choudhury’s savagely ironic allegory of rural politics in Orissa. The villagers of Mankonal, surrounded by rapidly depleting stone quarries, are offered Rs 100 for every vote they give the local Zamindar who is contesting a State election. Villagers Bharasa and Laxmi, desperately in need of extra money, ‘adopt’ a terminally ill beggar and attempt to keep him alive until the election so that his vote may fetch them the extra money they require for their son’s marriage. The old man’s condition deteriorates and they have to carry him through the quarries to hospital. On the way, they blunder onto a dynamite blast which blows the old man to bits. The film demonstrates an exemplary control over its narrative as quarry explosions rend the air, throwing up continuous clouds of acrid dust, and picture cut-outs of the politician-landlord weave through the lives of the villagers like grotesquely surreal comments both on the bizarre situation as well as on the forms of realism usually deployed by Indian film for these themes. The film was briefly denied a censorship certificate, apparently because of an unintended physical resemblance between its fictional politician and the then-Information & Broadcasting Minister.

NLREEKSHE

1994 113’ col Kodava

d/co-p/co-sc/c D. Prasad pc Memorable Movies co-p U. Chandrasena st Chittaranjan co-sc/dial A.C. Kariappa m Vijayakumar

lp Nanjundaiah, Bhargavi Narayanan, Madrira Sanju, Mamatha, Addanda C. Kariappa, Achiyanda Aiyappamaiyya, Chendanda Subbaiah, Chekkera Sushila Thyagaraj

Remarkable experimental debut feature in the Kodava dialect from the Coorg region. Set on the eve of Independence, the story covers the night of 13 August 1947, showing a small group of characters in the colonial tea plantation of Chengappa (Nanjundaiah) and his wife. When a British flag is replaced by an Indian one, a police raid ensues. The main story tells of the servant Ponnu (Sanju), his relationship with his employers and with the suffering Kaveri (Mamatha). The most extraordinary aspect of the film is its camerawork with extended sequence shots, often lasting for 10mins, underscoring the elegaic minimalism of performance and narrative style. The day dawns and with it independence, but the promised utopia is accompanied by the news that Kaveri has been killed by her husband.

Bhargavi Narayanan and Nanjundaiah in Nireekshe

PAKSHEY

1994 154’ col Malayalam

d Mohan pc Kairali Films p Mohan Kumar s Cheriyan Kalpakavadi lyr K. Jayakumar c Saroj Padhy m Johnson

lp Mohanlal, Thilakan, Shantikrishna, Shobhana, Venu Nagavalli

When his father dies, the middle-class youth Balachandran (Mohanlal) finds himself faced with unexpected new burdens. He joins the Indian Administrative Service and becomes a minor administrator. He is also forced by his new circumstances to abandon his childhood sweetheart (Shobhana) and marry the daughter (Shantikrishna) of a rich landlord. Many of the ‘personal’ aspects of the male lead’s dilemmas are used to individualize and psychologize the political aspects of a bureaucrat’s responsibilities.

PARINAYAM

1994 163’(130’) col/scope Malayalam

d T. Hariharan pc Seven Arts p G.P. Vijay Kumar s M.T. Vasudevan Nair lyr Yusuf Ali Kacheri c S Kumar m Bombay Ravi

lp Mohini, Vineeth, Thilakan, Shanthi Krishna, Manoj K. Jayan, Nedumudi Venu, Jagathi Srikumar, Oduvil Unnikrishnan, Sukumari

In 1940s Kerala, the 17 year-old Unnimaya (Mohini) is widowed shortly after she has become the fourth wife of an elderly Namboodiri Brahmin. When she becomes pregnant, the local Brahmins incarcerate her for refusing to name her lover. Her progressive stepson Kunjunni, a man of her own age, offers her shelter when she is ritually excommunicated. Her lover was the effete Kathakali dancer Madhavan, whom she rejects when he finally turns up to acknowledge his responsibilities to her child. Vasudevan Nair’s script returns to his familiar concerns addressing a decaying feudalism in pre-Independence Kerala. The film’s sensitive cinemascope camerawork as well as Thilakan’s remarkable performance as the Brahmin inquisitor stand out.

PAVITHRA

1994 138’ col

d/p/s K. Subhash pc Dhanooja Films lyr Vairamuthu, Pazhani Bharathi c Bernard S. David m A.R. Rehman

lp Nasser, Ajit Kumar, S.S. Chandran, Vadivelu, Radhika, Kovai Sarala, Keerthana, Disco Shanti

Pavithra (Radhika) is unable to bear children and transfers her material affection to a terminally ill student in the hospital where she is a nurse. This makes her husband Raghu (Nasser) jealous, further straining their already complicated relationship. The film works mainly on unusually dignified performances by its middle-aged lead couple, both noted Tamil actors.

PRASAB

aka The Deliverance

1994 83’ col Bengali

d/s/m Utpalendu Chakraborty p Satarupa Sanyal, Jayanta Bhadury

lp Arjun Chakraborty, Sreela Majumdar, Gautam Chakraborty, Satarupa Sanyal

Poignant political melodrama in context of the decline of the Naxalite movement in Calcutta and, following a massive State crackdown, its withdrawal to Bihar. Samiran (A. Chakraborty) is separated from his wife Pritha (Majumdar) when he, along with several CPI(ML) activists, is sentenced to life imprisonment. He enjoins his wife to remarry in the interests of their child’s security. When he is released following a change in government, he finds that his colleague has become a rich industrialist, but Pritha, who did not remarry, has continued her struggle as a Communist leader in Bihar. A muted and, by Chakraborty’s former standards, more self-consciously melodramatic work, the film has a fine performance by Sreela Majumdar.

RAJA BABU

1994 161’ col/scope Hindi

d David Dhawan pc Sapna Arts p Nandu G. Tolani st/sc K. Bhagyaraj dial Anees Bazmee lyr Sameer c Rajan Kinagi m Anand-Milind, Amar Haldipur

lp Govinda, Karishma Kapoor, Shakti Kapoor, Aruna Irani, Gulshan Grover, Prem Chopra, Kadar Khan

The best-known example of the formula associated with Govinda’s starring roles. He plays Raja Babu, the spoilt and wayward son of the rich landlord Kishen Singh (Khan) and a doting mother (Irani). Raja seeks to seduce Madhu (K. Kapoor), which involves, among other stratagems, dressing up like Dharmendra in Dharam Veer (1977). Just before they are to marry Madhu discovers that Raja is illiterate and insults his father by publicly calling off the marriage. Later, Madhu changes her mind, but by then Raja has agreed to marry a girl chosen by his father. Later, Raja’s illegitimate birth and the ambitions of the evil Lakhan (Chopra), Raja’s Uncle, assisted by Lakhan’s son Banke (Grover), trigger the complicated climax as first Raja and then his mother get thrown out of the house before joining forces to defeat the crooks. The film became notorious for its two song hits Aa ee oo/mera dil na todo (with Govinda dressed as a Congress politician and chorus girls who sexily raise their severe white and black-bordered sarees associated with the female workers of the party) and Sarkailo khatiya, both of which led to a major censorship controversy following accusations of obscenity, mainly since they were extensively aired on satellite TV before being submitted to the Indian censor board.

Govinda and Karishma Kapoor in Raja Babu

SAINYAM

aka The Army

1994 194’ col/scope Malayalam

d Joshi pc Evershine Films p S.S.T. Subramanyam, V. Balaram st/lyr Shibu Chakravarthy sc/dial S.N. Swamy c Jayanan Vincent m S.P. Venkatesh

lp Mammootty, Mukesh, Mohini, Priya Raman

A nationalist ‘tribute’ to the Indian Air Force, continuing a pan-Indian trend of 90s nationalist melodramas (cf. Roja, 1992; 1942: A Love Story, 1994) often valorizing India’s armed forces while excoriating Muslim separatists. The intensely nationalist Air Force officer Eeshwar (Mammootty) leads an exclusively Malayali unit stationed in politically turbulent Kashmir. He reluctantly offers shelter to the beautiful Lakshmi (Mohini) when she is deserted by her lover. It later emerges that her cruel lover supports the separatist militants and blackmails her into leaking secrets from Eeshwar’s files. Eventually, Eeshwar, with his ‘good’ Muslim colleague, settles both personal and national scores with the timely help of some reformed Kashmiri terrorists who surrender with a speech committing themselves to peace, education, growth and progress.

SAMMOHANAM

1994 106’ col Malayalam

d/p C.P. Padmakumar pc Cine Valley sc Balakrishnan Mangad c M.R.Radhakrishnan m Ilaiyaraja

lp Archana, Murali, Nedumudi Venu, Sarath Das, Radhakrishnan, K.P.A.C. Lalitha, Kukku Parameshwaran, Janu, Kunjani

Mobilising figures and themes from rural Kerala folk forms, especially theyyam, the story set in remote North Kerala centers on a young woman, Pennu (‘the girl’), whose sensuality disturbs and destroys the static tranquillity of a village inhabited by character types familiar from village stories and folkloric tales, incarnating an array of vices and virtues: the hardworking sugarcane farmer Chandu (Murali) and his family, their slightly backward helper Ambu (Das), Chindan (Radhakrishnan) who operates a sugar mill and his sister Kunjunni (Parameshwaran), some local drunks, the old Karuvan allegedly possessing magical powers, and the trader Ummini who travels to the city and back, providing the village’s link with the outside world, and a consummate storyteller. Ummini and Pennu eventually form a couple, but the turmoil she caused among the locals results in Chindan mistakenly knifing Ambu, the symbol of rural innocence, and drowning himself. Pennu is forced to leave the village in the end, having dislocated it with her sexuality.

SHUBHALAGNAM

1994 145’ col Telugu

d/sc/m S.V. Krishna Reddy pc Shri Priyanka Pics p K. Venkateshwara Rao st Bhupathi Raja dial Diwakar Babu lyr Jonavittula, Seetharama Sastry, Gudduru Vishwanatha Sastry c Sarath

lp Jagapathi Babu, Aamani, Roja, Kota Srinivasa Rao, Suhasini, Brahmanandam, Gummadi Venkateshwara Rao

Telugu adaptation of Indecent Proposal (1993), reversing the original plot in deference to the insecurities of the targeted male audience. Middle-class protagonist (Babu), unable to satisfy his wife’s (Aamani) demands for material comfort, is persuaded by her to take a rich second wife (Roja). It doesn’t work out, however, and the happy ending follows after the first wife repents and the second conveniently leaves for the USA.

SOPAN

1994 134’ col Bengali

d Ajay Bannerjee pc Concept Constructions s/lyr Samiran Datta c Soumendu Roy m Bhupen Hazarika

lp Soumitra Chatterjee, Mamata Shankar, Dipankar Dey, Ajoy Bannerjee, Moon Moon Sen, Sanghamitra Sarkar

The radical filmmaker Niranjan Chakraborty (Chatterjee) witnesses his friend, police officer Ratanlal, commit a murder. The assassinated man is a noted intellectual and Niranjan’s erstwhile Communist mentor. In a drunken moment Niranjan discloses what he saw to a young journalist, causing a major political scandal. In the end, he denies having seen anything incriminating and rescues the corrupt officer from a prison sentence. The plot is padded by the journalist turning out to be the filmmaker’s illegitimate daughter by an earlier wife (Shankar) who rejected him because of his unprincipled opportunism. The epilogue has the filmmaker win awards, his radical reputation intact. Much of the film depends on local references to actual people and events, e.g. the murder in the film evokes the assassination, during Siddhartha Shankar Ray’s ministry, of noted Naxalite poet and intellectual Saroj Dutta by the police which it is commonly believed was actually witnessed by the star Uttam Kumar. The radical filmmaker character is seen as a caricature of Mrinal Sen and Utpal Dutt.

SUKRUTHAM

1994 148’ col/scope Malayalam

d Harikumar pc Chandrakanth Films p M.M. Ramachandran s M.T. Vasudevan Nair lyr O.N.V. Kurup c Venu m Bombay Ravi

lp Mammootty, Gauthami, Manoj K. Jayan, Shanthi Krishna, Narendra Prasad

Mammootty melodrama recalling the 70s ‘cancer-movies’. He plays the terminally ill journalist Rajasekhar, who returns to his village to die, enjoining his young wife (Gauthami) to remarry. However, he is miraculously cured by a new kind of ‘wholistic’ therapy and has to contend with his wife’s growing friendship with his best friend, Rajendran (Jayan). His family in the village is also dismayed by his recovery and, in the end, he kills himself.

SWAHAM

aka My Own; Destiny

1994 153’(141’) col/b&w Malayalam

d/co-sc Shaji N. Karun pc Filmfolk p/st/co-sc S. Jayachandran Nair co-sc Raghunath Paleri c Hari Nair m Raghavan K., Isaac Thomas Kottukkapalli

lp Venmani Vishnu, Haridas, Aswani, Mullenezhi, Sarath, Gopi, Praseetha, Rudraprathapan, Gopalakrishnan

Stunningly photographed melodrama of a family in Thenmala on the border of Kerala and Tamil Nadu. When the Brahmin Ramayyar (Haridas) dies, his wife (Aswani) has to raise their two children and look after the coffee shop that constitutes their only income. The shop is located near a countryside railway station whose manager offers them support. They are evicted by their landlord (Gopi) and the mother raises money to pay a bribe to get her son enlisted in the army. The son dies in a demonstration protesting against state corruption. A quotation from Kalidasa’s Shakuntalam announces the film’s intention to offer a new way of narrating a familiar Malayalam film plot, which would include all the detail that is usually discarded from such stories. The images change from colour to b&w as the story moves between the past and present, arriving at a tragic structure that furthers the director’s favoured idiom (cf. Piravi, 1988) of characters struggling to come to terms with the emptiness left by death.

TARGET

1994 122’ col Hindi

d/m Sandeep Ray pc Creative Entertainment st Prafulla Roy’s novel Manusher Juddha

s Satyajit Ray c Barun Raha

lp Om Puri, Champa, Mohan Agashe, Anjan Srivastava, Gyanesh Mukherjee

Satyajit Ray’s last screenplay tells of a rich Zamindar, Vidhyachal Singh (Agashe), who discovers that his drinking has caused him to lose his renowned hunter and marksman skills. He hires a professional hunter, Bharosa Ram (Puri), an ‘untouchable’, who is also expected to be the Zamindar’s spy in a colony of lower-caste people. Singh insists on taking credit for game that Bharosa has shot. The latter becomes disillusioned and leads a revolt.

TARPAN

1994 140’ col Hindi

d/co-sc K. Bikram Singh pc NFDC co-sc Neelabh c Venu m Rajat Dholakia

lp Om Puri, Revathi, Manohar Singh, Meeta Vasisth

Ex-bureaucrat Bikram Singh’s debut feature is an invented folk legend set in Shekhawati, Rajasthan. When a couple finds their daughter terminally ill, a soothsayer directs them to a distant village where no girls live beyond the age of seven. The cure is to be found in the cleaning of an ancient well, which in turn uncovers numerous past crimes which have to be repented and exorcised before the curse can be lifted. Both the script and camerawork are relentlessly exoticised in the effort to make an orientalist fantasy about superstition.

THENMAVIN KOMBATH

1994 164’ col/scope Malayalam

d/s Priyadarshan pc Prasidhi Creations p N. Gopalakrishnan lyr Girish Puthencherry c K.V. Anand m Berny, Ignatuis background m Venkatesh

lp Mohanlal, Shobhana, Nedumudi Venu, Kaviyoor Ponnamma

Frontier melodrama about Kerala’s Thazavad manorial system which is based on matrilineal kinship. Sreekrishna (Venu), the brother of the Madambipura House’s leader, Yashoda, is extremely friendly with his servant Manikan (Mohanlal). Another servant, Appikala, envious of Manikan’s favoured status, is the film’s official villain. The Madambipura House is locked in an ancestral rivalry with the equally large establishment run by Ganjimuda Gandhari, which usually finds expression in the bullock cart race at the annual Pongal festival. Both Sreekrishna and Manikan fall in love with the beautiful itinerant theatre actress Karuthambi (Shobhana), causing Manikan to briefly fall out of favour with both Yashoda and the local law. The film’s camerawork adopts the glossy style (diffusers and angled lighting calibrated to the exposure of high-speed colour stock) made fashionable by Tamil cinematographer P.C. Sriram. Shot mostly at dawn and dusk, the camerawork creates a glittering fantasy world that in turn determines both plot and performances.

TUNNU KI TINA

1994 161’ col Hindi

d/s Paresh Kamdar pc NFDC lyr Bharat Acharya, Ramesh Shah c K.K. Mahajan m Rajat Dholakia

lp Sunil Barve, Rajeshwari, Virendra Saxena, Renuka Shahane, Rohini Hattangadi

Kamdar’s debut film avoids the pitfalls of the New Indian Cinema’s tendency to rescue ‘commercial’ films by relying on quotations and an allegedly Brechtian self-reflexiveness (cf. Saeed Mirza, Ketan Mehta). The film tells the tale of a middle-class college youth, Tunnu (Barve), and his unfortunate love life. He first falls for an equally middle-class girl (Shahane), but abandons her when the sexy Tina (Rajeshwari) reassures his narcissism. His adventures are intercut with those of his con-man father (Saxena), a real-estate tout. In the end, the father comes to financial grief, Tunnu’s sister elopes with a Shiv Sena-type slumdweller and Tunnu’s girlfriend deserts him, leaving him wondering whether she ever existed. Tunnu joins the real-estate business, his optimism undiminished. The film starts with a brief narration of this tale in the ‘Hindi movie’ idiom, set in a hotel lobby and followed by a chase, before beginning its own story. Its main achievement, via numerous double-takes, resides in the way it reduces the entire business of storytelling to its stereotypical function, forcing viewers constantly to doubt the narrative’s truth value even as it wallows in several realist conventions.

UNISHE APRIL

1994 138’ col Bengali

d/s Rituparno Ghosh pc Spandan Films p Renu Roy c Sunirmal Majumdar m Jyotishka Dasgupta

lp Aparna Sen, Debashree Roy, Dipankar Dey, Prasenjit

Ghosh’s second feature, a major success, is an Autumn Sonata (Ingmar Bergman, 1978) type melodrama focussing on the differences between a famous mother, the dancer Sarojini (Sen), and her daughter Aditi (Roy), a medical student in Delhi. The daughter, as was her doctor father before her, is unable to handle her mother’s sense of independence and fame. Most of the film takes place in a single night in Calcutta as the daughter tries to commit suicide on the anniversary of her father’s death. A barrage of dialogue - devoted to showing two major Bengali female stars, Sen and Roy, locked in a histrionic duel - ends only when the two become reconciled, not through any resolution of the major issues involved in their problems, but by reconfirming the filial bond. The film marked a departure from the dominant melodramas of the time which were geared to addressing, in the industry’s terms, ‘female and rural’ audiences rather than the urban middle class habituated to ‘modernising’ television drama.

VARAVU ETTANA SELAVU PATHANA

1994 173’ col Tamil

d/s V. Shekhar pc Thiruvalluvar Films lyr Vali c Rajendran m Chandrabose

lp Nasser, Radhika, Vadivelu, Kovai Sarala, Jaishankar, Senthil

The thrifty middle-class clerk Sivaraman (Nasser) is constantly urged by his wife Lakshmi (Radhika) to earn more so their children can have a better life. When his much-awaited promotion does not arrive, he joins the staff of a politician and member of the state legislature. This implicates him in a major scandal, and he commits suicide with his family. The morbid illustration of middle-class angst proved successful mainly in the semi-urban markets.

VARSA LAXMICHA

1994 152’ col Marathi

d/sc Madhukar Pathak pc Ravindra Pics p Ravindra Vinayak Joshi lyr Kusumagraj (aka V.V. Shirwadkar), Shanta Shelke c Bal Bapat m Shridhar Phadke

lp Ravindra Mankani, Sukanya Kulkarni, Narendra Pathak, Suhasini Deshpande

Ambitious and elaborately plotted Marathi film set, following an all-India 90s trend, in the years just preceding Independence, mapping the story of a family onto the freedom struggle. Laxmi (Kulkarni) is married when still an adolescent to the previously married Zamindar Vasudeo Inamdar (Mankani). She first tames her errant and macho husband and then becomes a figurehead in the nationalist Congress-led struggle. Individual animosities, mainly with neighbour and village enemy Pandu Tavade, are eventually overcome by her elevation to iconic status.

WHEEL CHAIR

1994 118’ col Bengali

d/sc/m Tapan Sinha pc NFDC p Ravi Malik, Dr Debashish Majumdar lyr Rabindranath Tagore c Soumendu Roy

lp Soumitra Chatterjee, Arjun Chakraborty, Laboni Sarkar, Manoj Mitra, Ruma Guha-Thakurta

A reformist social extending Sinha’s deployment of two key motifs in his work: the perils faced by women when venturing into social space and the redemption of institutions through dedicated individuals exercising middle-class professions. The plot concerns the cure of a young woman whose attempt to escape a gang of rapists, effectively filmed in ominous silence, has left her paralysed. She attends an experimental clinic run by a crippled doctor (Chatterjee) assisted by reformed youths and manages to overcome her traumatic experience.

YAMALEELA

1994 140’ col Telugu

d/sc/m S.V. Krishna Reddy pc Manisha Films p/st K. Aatchi Reddy dial Diwakar Babu lyr Bhuvana Chandra, Jonavittula, Seetharama Sastry c Sarath

lp Ali, Indraja, Satyanarayana, Brahmanandam, Kota Srinivasa Rao, Balaiah, T. Bharani

Continuing his series of fantasy socials, this hit established director Reddy as a box office champion in ‘90s Telugu cinema. A youth (comedian-star Ali) discovers a magic book that can predict the future. The book had been lost by Chitragupta (Brahmanandam), the assistant of Yama, god of death (Satyanarayana), and both come to earth in search of it, leading to several comic episodes. One of the more unexpected successes of the year.

YEH DILLAGI

1994 155’ col/scope Hindi

d Naresh Malhotra pc Aditya Films s Sachin Bhowmick lyr Sameer c Raju Kaygee m Dilip Sen, Samar Sen

lp Akshay Kumar, Saif Ali Khan, Kajol, Saeed Jaffrey, Reema Lagoo, Anjan Srivastava

Commercially successful comedy featuring the popular star duo of Akshay Kumar and Saif Khan (cf. Main Khiladi Tu Anari, 1994). They play brothers and heirs to the Saigal industries who both fall in love with their driver’s (Srivastava) daughter (Kajol) after she transcends class differences by becoming a fashion model. Vijay (Kumar) is the serious-minded one, Vicky (Khan) the compulsive flirt. The film includes the major hit song Ole ole.

ALLDU MAJAAKA

1995 161’ col Telugu

d E.V.V. Satyanarayana pc Devi Film Prod p K. Devi Varaprasad st/dial Posani Krishnamurali lyr Veturi Sundara Ramamurthy, Bhuvana Chandra c K.S. Hari m Koti

lp Chiranjeevi, Ramya Krishna, Rambha, Laxmi, Giribabu, Brahmanandam, Kota Srinivasa Rao, Ooha, Chinna, Srihari, Chalapathi Rao, Mahesh Anand

A massive censorship controversy transformed this minor success into a major one. Sitaram (Chiranjeevi), the son of a respected village elder, is arrested and condemned to death for murdering a police officer. The villains are Vasundhara (Laxmi) and Kota Peddaiah (Srinivasa Rao). They prevent the hero’s pregnant sister (Ooha) from marrying her lover, Peddaiah’s son (Chinna). Sitaram escapes from custody and forces Pappi (Ramya), Vasundhara’s elder daughter, to marry him, and later masquerades as Mr Toyota, a wealthy expatriate businessman. In this guise he first tries to marry Vasundhara herself, and then her second daughter Bobby (Rambha). Eventually, his true identity revealed, he escapes once again shortly before he is to be hanged, and rescues his sister and parents-in-law (including a now-repentant Vasundhara). In the deliberately voyeuristic finale, he is seen in a bedroom with both sisters Pappi and Bobby. Reminiscent in some ways of Attaku Yamudu Ammayiki Mogudu (1989) and Gharana Mogudu (1992), the film’s release was followed by several protests by women’s and student groups calling for its ban, and responses by members of Chiranjeevi’s fan clubs threatening self-immolation if the film was withdrawn. The main causes of the controversy were the sexually explicit dialogues and the hero’s flirtation with his mother-in-law. A dance sequence featuring Chiranjeevi with Laxmi and the two heroines Ramya and Rambha was accused by film critics of indecency. The song, however, was retained and only a few other cuts were imposed by a Censor revising committee.

AMMA DONGA

1995 149’ col Telugu

d Sagar pc Mouli Creations p Bharati Mouli, C.H. Sudhakar Babu st Satyamurthy dial Vinay lyr Veturi Sundara Ramamurthy c V. Srinivasa Reddy m Koti

lp Krishna, Soundarya, Aamani, Indraja, Kota Srinivasa Rao, T. Bharani

The ageing former superstar Krishna’s image is reinflated by three heroines in this story about an honest man jailed for a murder he did not commit. He comes out of prison determined to get his revenge. Bizarre sequences include one showing the villains sitting in hell plotting against the hero. Its success re-established Krishna as still one of the most reliable stars in Telugu film.

AMMORU

1995 129’ col Telugu

d Kodi Ramakrishna pc M.S. Art Movies p M. Shyamaprasad Reddy st M.S. Arts Unit dial Satyanand lyr Mallemala c C. Vijayakumar m Chakravarthy, Sri

lp Suresh, Soundarya, Ramya Krishna, Baby Sunayana, Rami Reddy, Babu Mohan, Chidambaram

The main Telugu box office success of 1995, esp. for its special effects. Bhawani (Soundarya), a lower caste orphan and devotee of the goddess Ammoru, is responsible for the arrest of the evil Gorakh (Reddy). When Gorakh is released from prison, vowing revenge, Bhawani is married to a doctor (Suresh) who happens to be related to the villain. The doctor goes abroad to study, leaving his wife unprotected. When Gorakh’s sister Leelamma tries to kill Bhawani, the goddess Ammoru (Ramya) descends to earth and takes the form of Bhawani’s maid servant in order to protect her. Gorakh finds a way for the servant to be dismissed, kills Bhawani’s infant son and tortures her husband, with the help of the evil spirit Chenda. Eventually the goddess returns, and in a spectacular finale featuring the special effects, kills Gorakh. Beginning with an idiom resembling the mythological, the film transforms into a domestic family drama while maintaining its allegience to folk legends about female village deities. The big-budget hit was also known for its music often using folk tunes and established the newcomer Soundarya as a major star. A dubbed version in Tamil, Amman, was also a hit.

AYANAKU IDDARU

1995 167’ col Telugu

d E.V.V. Satyanarayana pc Tulasi-Annapurna Creations slrukapalli Mohana Rao lyr Bhuvana Chandra, Samavedam Shanmugha Sharma c Adusumilli Vijayakumar m Koti

lp Jagapati Babu, Ramya Krishna, Ooha, Satyanarayana, Allam Veerappa, Brahmanandam, Kota Srinivasa Rao, A.V.S. Subramanyam

A successful example of the popular Telugu melodrama associated with Shobhan Babu’s 70s-80s work, in which a man has a relationship with two women. Suryam (Jagapati Babu) falls in love with Ramya (Ramya) mistaking her to be the author of an anonymous love letter actually written by her younger step-sister Ooha (Ooha). When Ramya abandons Suryam on the day of their marriage for a career in show business, he marries Ooha instead to save both himself and her family from a scandal. However, she refuses to consummate the marriage in protest. Ramya then returns and accuses her step-sister of having stolen her lover. She camps in the couple’s home and tries to seduce Suryam. Despite the havoc caused by Ramya, the married couple is eventually reunited after Ooha attempts to kill herself. The film’s main narrative pivot is the symbolic space occupied by Ooha, who, on the one hand, as the embodiment of modernity, refuses a subservient role in the marriage, but who nevertheless is forced to also play the sacrificing woman: a contradiction in most conventional narratives that this film specifically sets out to resolve in its characterisation.

BANGARWADI

1995 124’ col/scope Marathi

d/co-sc/co-dial Amol Palekar pc NFDC-Doordarshan st/co-sc/co-dial Vyankatesh Madgulkar based on his novel co-sc/co-dial Chitra Palekar c Debu Deodhar m Vanraj Bhatia

lp Chandrakant, Adhishree Atre, Sushma Deshpande, Chandrakant Kulkarni, Nandu Madhav, Sunil Ranade, Nagesh Bhosle, Hiralal Jain, Kishore Kadam, Upendra Limaye

Palekar’s second Marathi film after Aakriet (1981) revisits the classic Marathi tradition of rural melodrama associated with the writer Madgulkar, a genre central to the regionalist imaginary of post-Independence Maharashtra. Set in 1939 in the formerly princely state of Aundh, a young school teacher (Kulkarni) is posted to the hamlet of Bangarwadi, noted for its criminal’ tribe of Ramoshis and its perennial drought problems. The teacher introduces modernity via a school as well as concepts such as the values of education and communal harmony. However the draught strikes and the villagers leave, but the school teacher stays behind. Chandrakant Mandhre, the noted Marathi star, plays the village headman.

BOMBAY

1995 134’ col/scope Tamil/Hindi

d/s Mani Rathnam pc Aalayam dial Sujata lyr Vairamuthu c Rajiv Menon m A.R. Rehman

lp Aravind Swamy, Manisha Koirala, Nasser, Kitty, Radhabai, Tinnu Anand

Controversial melodrama set in the 1993 Bombay riots following the destruction of the Babri Masjid by Hindu zealots in December 1992. In a Tamil village, the Hindu Shekhar (Swamy) falls for a Muslim woman, Shehla Bano (Koirala). When the fathers of both oppose the marriage, the couple elope to Bombay where Shekhar gets a job as a journalist, while Bano gives birth to twin boys. Their personal story is intercut with growing signs of religious fanaticism around them led by saffron-clad members of the Shakti Samaj, an obvious reference to the Shiv Sena. Following the destruction of the mosque, Muslim militants kill two workers, and the Shakti Samaj leader (Anand), referring to Shiv Sena leader Bal Thackeray, leads his party into full-scale reprisals against the city’s large Muslim population. Much of the film’s second half recreates the riot scenes on sets that replicate their original locations with astonishing fidelity. The couple lose their two children in the riots, who are looked after by a transvestite. In the end, after a fervent pacifist plea by Shekhar, the family is reuinted and the secular-minded common folk of both communities pacify the rioters. The film was controversial even before its release, when Amitabh Bachchan, whose company ABCL distributed the Hindi version, sought Thackeray’s ‘approval’ of the film thereby further legitimating his position as an extra-constitutional censor. It was later attacked for its allegedly ‘secular’ credentials, its misrepresentation of widely reported events in order to blame the Muslims for having started the riots, and for its tendency to equate the ‘voice of reason’ with Hindu majoritarianism. Ravi Vasudevan (1996) has published an extensive critique of the film and on its reception.

Manisha Koirala and Arvind Swamy in Bombay

COOLIE NO. 1

1995 143’ col/scope Hindi

d David Dhawan pc Puja Films p Vashu Bhagnani st Amma Creations sc Rumi Jaffrey dial Kadar Khan lyr Sameer c Rajan Kinagi m Anand-Milind, Shyam-Surender

lp Govinda, Karishma Kapoor, Harish, Kanchan, Kadar Khan, Shakti Kapoor, Sadashiv Amrapurkar, Kulbhushan Kharbanda, Mahesh Anand, Vikas Anand, Mahavir Shah, Tiku Talsania, Shammi

Slapstick comedy by the same director-star team responsible for Raja Babu (1994). Govinda plays Raju, a coolie who falls for the rich Malti (K. Kapoor). Shadiram Gharjode (Amrapurkar), a marriage fixer, sees this as an opportunity to take revenge on Malti’s father Hoshiyar Singh (Khan). Raju masquerades as Kunwar Mahendra Pratap, the son of a Bombay-based millionaire (Kharbanda), and marries Malti under false pretences. The rest of the film interweaves Raju’s desperate efforts to maintain the masquerade, which includes having to invent a twin brother, with the millionaire’s evil son’s efforts to kill his father. In the end, the millionaire, saved in hospital by Raju (disguised as a woman), disowns his son and makes Raju his heir. Numerous songs and a large number of stock characters of the by now familiar Dhawan-Govinda genre include comedians Shakti Kapoor as Malti’s Uncle who speaks with a lisp and Tiku Talsania as the cop who unravels the whole mystery.

DILWALE DULHANIA LE JAYENGE

1995 192’ col/scope Hindi

d/s Aditya Chopra p Yash Chopra dial Javed Siddiqui lyr Anand Bakshi c Manmohan Singh m Jatin-Lalit

lp Kajol, Shah Rukh Khan, Farida Jalal, Amrish Puri, Anupam Kher, Satish Shah

1995’s top-grossing Hindi film following on from the successful Hum Aapke Hain Koun …! (1994). Choudhury Baldev Singh (Puri) is a London-based newsagent pining for his native Punjab. He wants to return to his roots by forcing his daughter Simran (Kajol) to marry the son of his old friend (Shah), whom neither has met for 20 years. Simran goes on a European tour before going to India, but there she meets and falls for Raj (Khan). This causes her tyrannical father to uproot his family overnight and return to Punjab, where he is received by dancing peasants in waving paddy fields. However, Raj turns up there and promises to rescue Simran from her intended marriage, but only with the approval of their respective parents. To achieve this, he inveigles himself into the household under a range of masquerades and false promises, until, having made the scheduled marriage impossible, he wins the girl from her reluctant father. As with HAHK, this film also allows for a limited space within the terms of a feudal patriarchy where young people may aspire to a kind of watered-down version of modern subjectivity, represented in consumerist terms, before ‘returning to the fold’. An alternative reading of the film could see it as chronicling the hero’s passage from British-Asian diaspora into traditional Indian patriarchy, with the love story (despite the film’s slogan, ‘Come, fall in love!’) simply sugar-coating the prescription. A remarkable feature of the film is the elimination of e.g. the staple Bachchan formula of the State as a contested site, being replaced here by an unproblematic subsumption of feudal patriarchy into ‘postmodern’ globalisation and the selling of ‘authentic’ identity as something that can only be achieved via consumerism.

Anupam Kher (left), Shah Rukh Khan (centre) and Kajol (right) in Dilwale Dulhania Lejayenge

DOGHI

1995 164’ col Marathi

co-d/s Sumitra Bhave co-d Sunil Sukhtankar pc NFDC-Doordarshan lyr N.D. Manohar c Charudatt Dukhande m Anand Modak

lp Renuka Daftardar, Uttara Baokar, Sonali Kulkarni, Sadashiv Amarapurkar, Suryakant, Madhu Kambikar, Parth Umaran

Debut feature by sociologist and NGO activists Bhave and Sukhtankar, known earlier for their short film Chakori (1992). Two sisters from a poor rural family sustain their relationship in the face of a variety of problems. Their parents (Suryakant, Baokar) are wage labourers who also attempt to till their piece of infertile land. Gauri (Dafardar), whose marriage is abandoned when the groom dies, ends up a prostitute in order to pay for her sister Krishna’s (Kulkarni) future and her family’s maintenance.

GULABl

1995 138’ col/scope Telugu

d/s Krishna Vamsy pc Varma Creations/Amitabh Bachchan Corporation Ltd. p Ram Gopal Varma dial Nadimetti Narasinga Rao lyr Sitarama Sastry c Rasool m Shashi Preetham

lp J.D. Chakravarthi, Maheshwari, Jeeva, Chandramohan, Banerjee

A woman (Maheshwari) is ‘sold’ to a prostitution ring by hero’s (Chakravarthy) friend, but is rescued by the hero just before she is to be forcibly married to a Dubai-based Sheikh. Produced by Varma and directed by Vamsy, considered a leading member of the Varma school of filmmaking, the bare plot is substantiated by a fast-moving screenplay eliminating conventional melodrama and targeting a new urban youth audience. The film’s success brought its lead pair and director into prominence in Telugu film.

HAGRAMAYAOJINAHARI

aka Rape in the Virgin Forest

1995 73’ col Bodo

d/p/s Jwngdao Bodosa pc Boclosa Int. co-sc H. Barahma, Narzary, M. Hajowary, M. Basumatary m Rajeshwar Barahma

lp Tikendrajit Nazary, Onjali Basumatary

Melodrama in the North Eastern Bodo dialect about a woodcutter, Budan, who is forced into crime in order to pay for his daughter’s dowry. He ends up under the thumb of a gang of urban goons who rape the daughter.

INDIRA

1995 143’ col Tamil

d/co-s Suhasini pc G.V. Films co-s Mani Rathnam lyr Vairamuthu c Santosh Sivan m A.R. Rehman

lp Aravind Swamy, Anuradha Hasan, Ashwini, Nasser, Radha Ravi

Tamil star Suhasini’s directorial debut, scripted by her husband Mani Rathnam. Set in still feudal Southern Tamil Nadu, the film tells of the feud between the evil landlord Kotamarayar (Ravi) and the villagers of Maranur, whom he drives to a less fertile area across a river. The villagers are led by Sethupathy (Nasser), married to the villain’s sister and excommunicated for that reason. When Setupathy is killed by the landlord, his daughter Indira (Hasan) takes over the leadership of the village, with the encouragement of her urban lover (Swamy). In the film’s climax, when a flood threatens the portion of the village occupied by the upper-caste sections, Indira succeeds in establishing a humanitarian relationship transcending caste differences and set to the chant Inni achcham achcham illai, inni adimai ennam illai (There is no more fear, there is no thought of slavery).

ITIHAS

aka Exploration

1995 101’ col Assamese

d/s Bhabendranath Saikia pc Rupkamal

c Kamal Nayak m Indreshwar Sharma

lp Nikumani Barua, Tapan Das, Biju Phukan, Mridula Barua

Modernisation melodrama in urban Assam about the impoverished family of the widowed Sarala who owns a piece of land coveted by the greedy property developer Kishorilal. Her sons fall prey to his financial pressure and her daughter is killed.

KAHINI

1995 105’ col Bengali

d/p/co-st Malay Bhattacharya pc Movie Mill co-p Chandramala Bhattacharya co-sc Shyamal Sengupta c Sunny Joseph m Debajyoti Mishra

lp Dhritiman Chatterjee, Debesh Roy Choudhury, Debashish Goswami, Robi Ghosh, Anuradha Ghatak, Suranjana Dasgupta, Soumomoy Bakshi, Neelkantha Sengupta

Innovative debut feature by the TV producer and designer Bhattacharya in the tradition of Chakraborty’s Kaal Abhirati (1989) and Vishwanathan’s Sunya Theke Suru (1993). The story, told with a very sparse soundtrack, revolves around three characters, a kind of intellectual (Chatterjee), a taxi driver and a billboard painter, who drug and kidnap a child (hanging on to a notion of childhood) and set out for the countryside in their blue Ambassador car, initiating India’s first explicit attempt at a road movie. The genre’s obligatory quota of ‘strange encounters’ demarcate two major sequences: a villager who has poisoned his entire family and is caught before he can commit suicide, and the monologue of a petrol station attendant. The kidnappers shelter in an old house where they unsuccessfully try to revive the unconscious infant, which dies, causing the trio to disintegrate. A parallel theme deals with a peasant family blissfully optimistic about finding a cure for their crippled son. The film ends with the acrobatic rehearsals, in the rain, of a travelling circus group introduced earlier as a kind of choral motif.

KARAN ARJUN

1995 175’ col/scope Hindi

d/p Rakesh Roshan pc Film Kraft st/sc Sachin Bhowmick, Ravi Kapoor dial Anwar Khan lyr Indivar c Kaka Thakur m Rajesh Roshan

lp Raakhee, Salman Khan, Shah Rukh Khan, Kajol, Mamta Kulkarni, Amrish Puri, Ranjeet, Ashok Saraf, Johnny Lever

The Hindi hit of 1995 is a remarkably scripted drama combining at least four genres: a Kali mythological, a reincarnation drama, a modernisation melodrama and a Sholay (1975) kind of Western. At some time in the past in Rajasthan, shown before the credit titles, Karan (Salman Khan) and Arjun (Shah Rukh Khan), the sons of Durga (Raakhee), are killed by the evil Durjan Singh (Puri). Durjan Singh had earlier killed their father and grandfather and appropriated the family’s ancestral property. However, Kali responds to Durga’s pleas and the dead sons are reborn as the streetfighter Ajay and the stable boy Vijay. The plot becomes complicated when a ‘modernised’ Durjan Singh, his villainy intact, becomes an arms smuggler in partnership with Mr Saxena (Ranjeet), whose daughter Sonia (Kajol) loves Vijay although she is supposed to marry Durjan Singh’s equally villainous son, Suraj. However, troubled as well as invigorated by memory flashes stemming from their earlier incarnations, Ajay and Vijay in the end unite with their mother to defeat the evil gang. The film had a series of hit songs, e.g. Yeh janmon ka bandhan hai (its leitmotif spanning the generational divide) and Jaati hun main/Jaldi hai kya, picturised on Kajol and Shah Rukh Khan.

KATHAPURUSHAN

1995 107’ col Malayalam

d/sc/co-p Adoor Gopalakrishnan pc Japan Broadcasting Corporation NHK, Adoor Gopalakrishnan Prod. co-p Tokiuchi Ogawa c Ravi Varma m Vijayabhaskar

lp Vishwanathan, Mini, Aranmula Ponnamma, Urmila Unni, Jagannatha Varma, Narendra Prasad, Babu Namboodiri, Lalitha, Ravi Vallathol, Mukesh, P.C. Soman

A dramatisation of Kerala’s history since the onset of the Independence struggle, this film narrates the life of Kunjunni (Vishwanathan), perennially pining for his absent father but warmly looked after by the women in his family, and especially close to a servant’s daughter, Meenakshi (Minni). Uncle Vasu (Prasad) is the activist in the family, first as a Gandhian independence fighter, then as member of the Kerala Communist Party. At university, Kunjunni also turns towards the CP and witnesses the first-ever democratic election of a Communist government in 1959. However, the government’s land reform measures drastically impoverish his family. Turning to a Maoist group and taking part in their naxalite insurgent activities including terrorist attacks, Kunjunni is eventually arrested and tortured by the police until a court confirms his innocence and orders his release. The disillusioned Kunjunni then establishes a life of quiet domesticity with Meenakshi until the wayward uncle re-emerges, now dressed in saffron robes and claiming to have espoused a life of spiritual values, all of which does not prevent him from making serious financial claims on Kunjunni. The solution arrives when a rich parvenu buys Kunjunni’s house. The film depicts with finely judged, dramatic and occasionally ironic tones the twists and turns in Kerala’s recent history and its elaboration of a democratic social system.

KAZHAKAM

1995 95’ col Malayalam

d/co-s M.P. Sukumaran Nair pc Rachana Films p T.N. Sukumaran co-s M. Sukumaran c Ashwini Kaul m Jerry Amaldev, Kaithapram

lp Urvashi, Nedumudi Venu, P.C. Soman, Valsala Menon, Ravi Vallathol, Kukku Parameshwaran, Mullanezhi, Mukundan, Master Mohan

Nair, having worked with Gopalakrishnan, returns to the mother-son relationship adumbrated in his first feature Aparahnam (1990), with this bitterly ironic tale of a woman’s religious mania, a variation on the theme of Radha and Krishna. The poor villager Radha (Urvashi) becomes unbalanced with grief when her husband and son die. Going to live with her mother (Menon), the two women derive some income from pilgrims visiting the local temple, an institution representing a complex knot of contradictory currents: indolence and moral corruption in the shape of its guardians (Venu, Mullanezhi) as well as traditional ideologies while remaining an important conduit for contact with outsiders. When the teacher Nandini (Parameshwaran) arrives to visit the temple with her young son Kannan (Mohan), the distraught Radha latches on to the son imagining him to be Krishna. When Kannan falls ill and dies, Radha’s delusional mania, the only source available to her in an impossibly constricted and oppressed situation, overwhelms her.

KURUDHIPPUNAL

1995 156’ col/scope Tamil

d/s P.C. Sriram pc Rajkamal Films p Charuhasan/Kamalahasan st Govind Nihalani sc/dial Kamalahasan m Mahesh

lp Kamalahasan, Arjun, Nassar, Gauthami, Geetha, Ravi, K. Vishwanath

Kamalahasan’s Tamil remake of Nihalanis Drohkaal (1994). The original story, featuring the conflict between a cop and a terrorist, is reformulated with allusions to CPI(ML) rebels in Tamil Nadu. The relocation involves an even more sensational melodrama, exemplified by blowing up a bus full of school children singing Sare jahan se achha (a hymn valorizing the Indian nation), as well as Kamalahasan’s own further psychologisation of the Om Puri role. Arjun plays the Naseeruddin Shah character and Nasser the dreaded terrorist Bhadra (Ashish Vidyarthi in the original). In remaking a familiar and extensively distributed Hindi film, Kurudhippunal reverses the trend of translating local language hits into bigger-budget Hindi movies for a nationwide audience, indicating how the success of Mani Rathnam’s Tamil films changed the industry’s view of cultural imperatives. The film was dubbed into Telugu as Drohi.

LIMITED MANUSKI

1995 104’ col Marathi

d/sc Nachiket/Jayoo Patwardhan pc NFDC, Doordarshan st/dial Shyam Manohar c Navroze Contractor m Milind Chitnavis

lp Rajit Kapoor, Gopika Sahani, Ganesh Yadav, Sudhir Joshi, Kishore Kadam, Ravindra Mankani, Meera Panshikar, Purnima Pendse, Lalita Pawar, Nilu Phule

Comedy set in the Maharashtrian lower middle-classes. Bank clerk Sadanand accidentally runs his motorised bicycle into a funeral procession for an infant child. Two members of the procession, Shrirang and Govind, believe that in this accident Sadanand has ‘wounded the soul’ of the dead baby. For most of the film, the two try to beat up Sadanand, while Sadanand, with the help of his pregnant wife Urmila, fends off this threat. The film introduces a number of characters into this process, and ends when it is revealed that the bereaved parents of the dead infant in the film’s beginning are expecting another baby.

NAAN PETHA MAGANE

1995 127’ col Tamil

d/s V. Shekhar pc Kannappan lyr Vali c Rajendran m Chandra Bose

lp Nizhalgal Ravi, Urvashi, Radhika, Manorama, Kovai Sarala, Radhabai

When Andal’s (Manorama) only son Ravi (Ravi) grows up, she dominates every aspect of his life fearing that he might fall for a modern woman who, in turn, might threaten Andal’s control over her domestic space. She makes her son marry Uma Maheshwari (Urvashi), a docile maid-servant. When Uma demonstrates some tendencies towards independence, Andal forces her daughter-in-law to commit suicide. Andal is arrested, but acquitted in court even though her own son believes her guilty. Although initially received with some protest, the film went on to become a major hit mainly with urban middle class audiences responding e.g. to Uma’s dialogues to her mother-in-law like ‘Since you feed and dress and bathe your son, why do you give me the mangalsutra, you could have worn it yourself (i.e. you could have married your son).

NASEEM

1995 89’ col Hindi

d/co-sc Saeed Akhtar Mirza pc NFDC/Doordarshan co-sc/dial Ashok Mishra c Virendra Saini m Vanraj Bhatia

lp Kaifi Azmi, Mayuri Kango, Kulbhushan Kharbanda, Surekha Sikri, Lalitmohan Tiwari, Salim Shah

Understated but intense family drama set in June-December 1992, the days preceding the demolition of the Babri Masjid on Dec 6 by Hindutva fanatics. Naseem (Kango) is a schoolgirl belonging to a middle-class Bombay-based Muslim family. She enjoys a warm relationship with her aged, ailing grandfather (Azmi). With increasing horror and foreboding, the family watches on their television set the news of the build-up at Ayodhya while the grandfather regales Naseem with poetry and stories of life in pre-Independence Agra, shown in several flashbacks. Naseem’s brother Mushtaq (Shah) tends towards desperate, possibly terrorist measures of resistance which pushes him towards Muslim fundamentalist circles. The family feels increasingly beleaguered by saffron-waving mobs and the police who infest all public spaces. The grandfather dies on December 6th, his death coinciding with the news of the mosque’s destruction. The film’s major feature, in addition to its finely judged creation of moods and its admirably controlled performances, is noted poet and former radical Azmi playing the grandfather, providing not just a reminder but a literal embodiment of the cultural traditions that were at stake in those tragic days.

NATTUPURA PATTU

1995? col Tamil

d/p/s/lyr Kasturiraja c Kichaas m Ilaiyaraja

lp Khushboo, Manorama, Sivakumar

1995’s surprise hit in Tamil was a low-budget ruralist ‘folk’ movie extensively featuring traditional narrative and performative forms including the karagam, kavadi, oyil, nayandi, komali etc., mounted in deliberate contrast to the post-Mani Rathnam emphasis on glossy technologically driven spectacles. Parijatham (Khushboo), a popular karagam dancer, wants to continue dancing even after her marriage to Pazhanisamy (Sivakumar), a noted performer. When Parijatham returns to the stage, in order to pay her husband’s debts, her insecure husband throws her out, forcing her to return to her mother (Manorama). The husband later wins custody of their son Velusami. When the son grows up and learns the truth, he abandons his father. Pazhanisamy, faced with a biitter feud with the village headman, later appeals to his estranged wife to help him in a climactic dance-duel, which she eventually wins after her husband’s death. Billed after a long gap as an Ilaiyaraja solo, the film’s earthy folk music - notably the song Othe roova tharen (‘I shall give you a rupee’) - proved the most successful of the year in Tamil film.

NIRNAYAM

1995 165’ col/scope Malayalam

d/sc Sangeeth Sivan pc Gayathri Prod./Sithara Combines p Suresh Balaji st/dial Cheriyan Kalpakavadi lyr Girish Puthencheri c Santosh Sivan m S.P. Venkatesh

lp Mohanlal, Heera, Lalu Alex, Soman, Ratheesh

The honest surgeon Dr Roy (Mohanlal) falls for the U.S.-returned Dr Annie (Heera). When Annie discovers a frightening organ-smuggling racket in her hospital, she is killed and Roy framed for her murder. However, on his way to jail, he escapes when the police van is hit by a train. A fugitive from justice, he tries to find out the truth, eventually helped by a police officer (Alex) who shoots the bad guy. The Sivan brothers’ team of director and cameraman combine to make a technically efficient thriller taking its cue from the film version of the television series The Fugitive. The Hindi version directed by Mahesh Bhatt was called The Criminal (1994).

ORMAKALUNDAYIRIKKANAM

aka Memories and Desires

1995 91’ col Malayalam

d/s T.V. Chandran pc Navadhara p Salim Karassery c Venu m Johnson

lp Mammootty, Gopi, Nedumudi Venu, Srinivasan, Priyambada Ray, Nitin

Chandran’s follow-up to the hit Ponthan Mada (1993) addresses a small community in rural Kerala when the first Communist government was dismissed in 1959 by Nehru’s Central government after two years in power. Told through the eyes of a small boy, Jayan (Nitin), the film contrasts his relationship with the larger-than-life Communist supporter Bhasi (Mammootty) to that with his tyrannical, Congress-supporting father (Venu). A second father-figure is provided by the mad scientist Thakaran (Gopi) who promises the end of the world. The dismissal of the government and Bhasi’s arrest coincides with Thakaran’s death, as well as with Jayan’s own symbolic revenge against his father when he throws a bowl of curry in the patriarch’s face.

PEDA RAYUDU

1995 165’ col Telugu

d Raviraja Pinisetty pc Shri Lakshmi Prasanna Pics. p Mohan Babu st/sc K.S. Ravikumar dial Satyamurthy, lyr Bhuvana Chandra, Sri Harsha, Samavedam Shanmugha Sharma c K.S. Prakash m Koti

lp Mohan Babu, Bhanupriya, Rajnikant, Soundarya

Feudal melodrama and one of the big successes of the Telugu cinema. Tamil star Rajnikant plays a small role of a benevolent village chief who is killed by his brother-in-law and nephew (the film’s villains). His two sons (both played by Mohan Babu) grow up as orphans, with the elder brother raising the younger. The two fall apart when the elder son becomes the village chief, while the younger - accused of a crime he did not commit - is banished from the village. Later, when a second feud develops between the two families, the younger brother returns to avenge his father’s death, while the elder brother as well as his wife (Bhanupriya) die.

RAJA

1995 168’ col/scope Hindi

d/co-p Indra Kumar pc Maruti International co-p Ashok Thakeria sc Rajiv Kaul, Praful Parekh dial Tanveer Khan lyr Sameer c Baba Azmi m Nadeem Shravan, Naresh Sharma

lp Sanjay Kapoor, Madhuri Dixit, Mukesh Khanna, Dalip Tahil, Rita Bhaduri, Mushtaq Khan, Adi Irani, Paresh Rawal

Raja (Kapoor) supports his elder brother Brijnath (Rawal) when the latter’s business empire is ruined by a fire and he is crippled. The film’s villain, Ranasaab (Khanna), had promised his daughter Madhu (Dixit) to Raja when Brijnath was rich, but now callously refuses to let the young couple meet and perpetrates all manner of evil. As adults, Raja and Madhu meet and fall for each other again and eventually marry while bringing the villains to book. Dixit outperforms hero Kapoor with numerous solo ‘highlights’ - Manmohan Desai’s phrase for autonomous vignettes with little relation to plot and designed mainly to showcase the star’s versatility - and two major song hits, Nazrein mili and Akhiyan milao. Indra Kumar’s third hit in a row (after Dil, 1990, and Beta, 1992) made Dixit, by way of Hum Aapke Hain Koun…! (1994), for a brief period into the most valuable star in the Hindi cinema.

RANGEELA

1995 144’ col/scope Hindi

d/p/s Ram Gopal Varma pc Varma Creations dial Neeraj Vora, Sanjay Chhel lyr Mehboob c W.B. Rao m A.R. Rehman

lp Urmila Matondkar, Aamir Khan, Jackie Shroff, Gulshan Grover, Avtar Gill, Achyut Potdar, Reema, Shammi, Rajesh Joshi

Varma’s first Hindi venture is remembered mainly as the sensational introduction of former child actress Matondkar (e.g. Shekhar Kapur’s Masoom, 1982) as the Hindi cinema’s most recent sex symbol. Playing an out-of-work movie actress, she is discovered by a major star (Shroff) who introduces her into the film industry. This leads to problems when her boyfriend (Khan), a lower-class Bombay youth who sells movie tickets in the black market, finds it difficult to cope with her success. The film is dominated by its several Rehman-composed song hits, amongst the biggest in the ‘90s in Hindi, e.g. Aayi re (sung by Asha Bhosle) and Tanha tanha, shot with considerable energy and inventiveness.

Amir Khan and Urmila Matondkar in Rangeela

SATI LEELAVATHI

1995 151’ col Tamil

d/sc/c Balu Mahendra pc Rajkamal Film Intl. st Ananthu dial ‘Crazy’ Mohan lyr Vali m Ilaiyaraja

lp Ramesh Aravind, Raja, Kalpana, Kamalahasan, Kovai Sarala, Heera

The married Arunachalam (Aravind) falls for Priya (Heera) to the distress of his wife Leelavathi (Kalpana). When Arunachalam moves out of his home and starts living with Priya, Leelavathi employs the services of her husband’s childhood friend Shaktivel (Kamalahasan), Shaktivel’s wife Pazhani (Sarala) and Priya’s ex-boyfriend Raja (Raja) who wants Priya back. An adaptation of Susan Seidelman’s She-Devil (1989), the film shares none of Roseanne Barr’s agency in establishing her own identity while destroying her husband’s; Mahendra’s more conventionally melodramatic alternatives were geared to middle-class acceptance and ensured the film’s success.

SISINDRI

1995 151’ col Telugu

d/s Sivanageshwara Rao pc Great India p Akkineni Nagarjuna lyr Seetharama Sastry c Teja m Raj

lp Nagarjuna, Master Akhil, Aamani, T. Bharani, Sudhakar, Giribabu

Successful remake of Hollywood’s Baby’s Day Out (1994), produced by its lead star and featuring his real-life son Akhil. An infant child gives his kidnappers a difficult time. Following a growing trend in Telugu cinema which proclaims a philanthrophic intention for basically commercial film ventures, the film announced that all profits would go to the Blue Cross Society.

SOGASU CHOODA THARAMA

1995 144’ col/scope Telugu

d/s Gunasekhar pc Snehanidhi Films

p K. Ramgopal dial Ajay Santhi lyr Seetharama Sastry, G. Vishwanatha Sastry c Sekhar Joseph m Ramani-Prasad

lp Naresh, Indraja, Annapurna, Tanikella Bharani

When a lowly paid engineer (Naresh) finds himself in debt as a result of his lavish lifestyle, his wife (Indraja) bails him out by starting a home-based saree-dyeing business. Earlier, the independent yet traditionalist character of the wife was established when she offered her future husband a dowry that she raised against a personal bank loan. The ‘offbeat’ film includes scenes in which, faced by a rape attempt from her husband, she threatens to kill him, and ends when he, chastised by his wife’s initiative, finally ‘accepts’ her as an equal. The director’s earlier Lathi (1992) had been critiqued for betraying an excessive influence of his mentor Ram Gopal Varma. That influence continues to be in evidence in the depiction of a lavishly shot, low-lit world of domesticity. The domestic here is curiously shut off from the world outside, emphasising instead its effort to suture female sexuality and woman’s economic independence into a traditionalising narrative about the ‘new’ woman in the context of a consumerist middle-class. It also had a successful musical score.

STREE

1995 93’(86’) col Telugu

d/sc K.S. Sethumadhavan pc NFDC-Doordarshan st Palagummi Padmaraju c S. Saravanan m L. Vaidyanathan

lp Vijay, Rohini

Following the failure of the megabudget Nammavar (1994), Sethumadhavan returned to his alternative arthouse image for this film of Padmaraju’s story. The folk performer Paddalu (Vijay) finds himself forced into petty crime when he is culturally marginalised by the TV and film industries. He is reformed by Rangi (Rohini), but the two are plunged further into illegalities, for which Rangi’s explanations become increasingly surreal as she presents them to the author, the only remaining sympathetic figure.

TAJ MAHAL

1995 156’ col Telugu

d/s Muppalaneni Siva pc Shri Suresh Prod.

p D. Rama Naidu dial Jandhyala lyr C. Narayana Reddy, Chandra Bose, Bhuvana Chandra, Seetharama Sastry c Chota K. Naidu m Srilekha

lp Srikanth, Sanghvi, Monica Bedi, Nutan Prasad, D. Rama Naidu

Successful low-budget love story focussing on the problem of a woman’s religion. The Hindu hero (Srikanth) falls for a Muslim woman (Bedi) while on a college excursion to Agra to see the Taj Mahal. Attempting to woo her, he gets beaten up instead by her Muslim step-brother. Her stepfather (Prasad), a migrant from Andhra Pradesh, reveals to her that she is not in fact his daughter, but of Hindu parentage. In her subsequent effort to trace her family, it is revealed that the hero is in fact distantly related to her, and the two marry after a complicated melodramatic plot.

TRIMURTI

1995 187’ col/scope Hindi

d Mukul S. Anand pc Mukta Arts p Subhash Ghai sc Karan Razdan dial Anees Bazmee lyr Anand Bakshi c Ashok Mehta m Laxmikant-Pyarelal

lp Jackie Shroff, Shah Rukh Khan, Anil Kapoor, Mohan Agashe, Saeed Jaffrey, Priya Tendulkar, Gauthami, Anjali Jathar

Multistar production by Ghai, re-valorizing the feudal mother-figure in 1990s consumerist religiosity. Satya (Tendulkar) goes to jail when she is framed by the Kali-worshipping mystic Kooka Singh (Agashe). Her three sons grow up, one an army officer (Shroff), the other two (Kapoor and Khan) in the pay of the villain. In the end, the unity of the clan is restored when the heroes fulfil their mother’s pledge. The film was one of the most expensive and most extensively marketed productions in Hindi cinema in 1995. Its commercial failure underscored the exhaustion of the genre, itself a compendium of previous Ghai productions, this time presented in Dolby sound and computer-aided special effects.

YUGANTA

aka What the Sea Said

1995 135’ col Bengali

d/s Aparna Sen pc NFDC c A. Shashikant, Dilip Verma m Jyotishka Dasgupta

lp Anjan Dutta, Rupa Ganguly, Pallavi Chatterjee, Kunal Mitra

Mapping political and environmental concerns upon a domestic melodrama, Sen’s most recent film occasionally borders on the surreal. An estranged couple, advertising executive Deepak (Dutta) and classical dancer Anusuya (Ganguly), return to a fishing village where they had spent their honeymoon. Their past life is told through a series of flashbacks, while the sea, polluted by rampant consumerism, appears to symbolise their present condition. A flashback reveals that Anusuya had fought a major industrial house on behalf of environmental activists, but later capitulated when that institution funded her dance school. ‘Global’ issues such as the gulf war and the rise of market capitalism are presented as impacting local and even personal problems. This relationship is graphically realised in the film’s end when a blazing sea, into which Deepak disappears, is connected to the gulf war oil slick. The apocalyptic end had been foretold by an old fisherman earlier in the story. Among those who publicly praised the film included major Bengali poet Shankho Ghosh, who commended its poetic sensibility, and novelist Debesh Roy who noted its independence from storytelling and Satyajit Ray-school filmmaking.

KADHAL DESAM

1996 158’ col/scope Tamil

d/s Kadir pc Gentleman Film Intl. p K.T. Kunjumon lyr Vali c Anandh m A.R. Rehman

lp Vineet, Abbas, Tabu, S.P. Balasubramanyam, Srividya

Producer K.T. Konjumon’s follow up to his earlier spectacles Gentleman (1993) and Kadhalan (1994), which had introduced the genre of the megabudget musical into 90s Tamil film, is a ‘teen’ movie featuring a love triangle framed by rivalry between two men’s colleges focused on sport and sexual conquest. The impoverished intellectual Karthik (Vineet) and the rich Arun (Abbas) are rivals who get bonded together when Arun saves Karthik’s life and Karthik, in turn, lets Arun score the winning goal in a football match. Both fall for Divya (Bombay star Tabu), but she only sees them as friends and refuses to choose between them. When a student from yet another college tries to molest Divya, reprisals lead to full-scale war between three colleges as students set most of the city on fire. Eventually the triangle is maintained in favour of collective friendship. Set in two well known colleges, Loyola and Pachaiyappa’s, in Madras, its mention of both institutions led to protests from the students of these colleges.