an incomplete list of my collection of films

Dear friend,

Hello! This is Bijit Borthakur, an admire of world cinema. I have got a good collection of films on DVD/DCD format which I wish to share with my friends and relatives. What follows is an incomplete list of my collection of films. If you are interested, you can contact me at the following address. I am also more than eager to know about your collection aswell.Feel free to write to me at:

Thanking you in anticipation.

Yours Sincerely,

Bijit Borthakur

N.B.P.Road, Amolapatty

P.O./Dist:Nagaon 782003

Assam

E-Mail:bjtborthakur@yahoo.com

1) The discreet charm of the bourgeoisie-Luis Bunuel

2) No Man’s Land-Danis Tavivic

3) The Battle of Algiers-Gillo Pontecorvo

4) Promised Land-Andrzej Wajda

5) Stolen Kisses-Francois Truffunt

SATHYAJIT RAY:

6)PATHER PANJALI (SONG OF THE ROAD) – 1955
7)APARAJITHO (THE UNVANQUISHED) – 1956
8)PARASH PATHER (PHILOSOPHER’S STONE) – 1958
9)JALASAGHAR (THE MUSIC ROOM) – 1958
10)APUR SANSAR (THE WORLD OF APPU) – 1959
11)DEVI (THE GODDESS) – 1960
12)THEEN KANYA (3 DANTERS) – 1961
13)KANCHENJUNGHA – 1962
14)ABHIJAN (THE EXPEDITION) – 1962
15)MAHANAGAR (THE BIG CITY) – 1963
16)CHARULATHA (THE LONELY WIFE) – 1964
17)KALPURUSH-O-MAHAPURUSH (LOWARD & HOLYMAN) – 1965
18)NAYAK (THE HERO) – 1966
19)CHIRIAKHANA (THE ZOO) – 1967
20)GOOPY GYNE BAGHA BYNE (ADVENTURES OF GOOPY BAGHA) – 1968
21)ARANYER DINRATI (DAYS AND NIGHTS IN FOREST) – 1969
22)PRATHIVANDI (THE ADVERSERY) – 1970
23)SEEMABADDHA (COMPANY LIMITED)- 1971
24)ASHAMI SANKEL (DISTANT THUNDER) – 1973
25)SONARKELLA (THE GOLDEN FORL) – 1974
26)JANA ARANYA ( THE MIDDLE MAN) - 1975
SHATRANJ KI KHILADI ( THE CHESS PLAYER) – 1977
27)JOY BABA FELUNATH ( THE ELEPHANT GOD) – 1978
28)HIRAK RAJAV DESHE (KINGDOM OF DIAMONDS) – 1980
29)SADGATI (DELIVERANCE) – 1981
30)GHARE BAIRE (THE HOME AND THE WORLD) – 1984
31)GANASHATRU (ENEMY OF PEOPLE) – 1989
32)SAKHA PROSAKHA (BRANCHES OF TREE) – 1990
33)AGUNTUK ( THE STRANGER) – 1991)

RITHWIK GHATAK :

34)NAGARIK ( THE CITIZEN) – 1952
35)AJANTRIK (PATHETIC FALLACY) – 1958

36) Samuel Beckett

37) Chokher Bali

38) Iti Srikanta

39) Mohulbonir Sereng

40) Kantatar-Bappaditya Bandopadhaya

41) Bibar-Subrato Sen

42) Padakshep

43) Abaidha-Gul Bahadur Sing, Kalyan Sen Badat

44) World Trade Centre-Oliver Stone

45) Black Friday

46) BARI THAKE PALIYE (RUNAWAY) – 1959
47) MEGHE DHAKA TARA (THE CLOUD CAPPED STAR) – 1961
48) KOMAL GANDHAR – 1961
49) SUBANAREKHA (THE GOLDEN LIVE) – 1962
50) TITAS EKTI NADIR NAAM (A RIVER NAMED TITAS) – 1973
51) JUKTI TAKKO AAR GAPPO (ARGUMENTS AND A STORY) – 1974

(52)Ardh Satya

(53)Sri 420

(54)Gone with the wind

(55)Life is beautiful

(56)The Departed

(57)Finding Forester

(58)Chocolate

(59)Arth

(60)Utsav

(61)36 Chowringhee Lane

(62)Parama

(63)6th Happiness

(64)Ben-Hur

65) Ek Ruka Hua Faisala

(66)Awara

(67)New Delhi Times

(68)Gandhi

(69)Kaagaz Ke Phool

(70)Party

(71)Mississippi Masala

(72)Aakrosh

(73)Zulu

(74)Streetcar named desire

(75)The English Patient

(76)One Fine Day

77) Provoked

(78)Chakra

79) White

80) Blue

81)The River
82)Red
83)New Delhi Times
84)The Return
85)The mirror
86)Lumiere & company
87)Aguirre the wrath of God
88)Battleship Potomkin
89)Talk to her
90)Yasmin
91)Wild strawberries
92)The Leopard
93)Throne of blood

94) Sanshodhan

95)15 Park Avenue

96) Mandi

97) Namesake

98) Anu-Satarupa Sanyal

99) Dharavi-Sudhir Mishra

100) Nehru-the jewel of India

101) Sardar-the iron man of India

102) Malina-Giuseppe Tornatore

102) Cleopatra

103) Godfather-1, 2, 3

106) High and Low

107) Happy Together

108)The Hidden Fortress

109)The Clockmaker-Bertrand Tavernier

110) Forest Gump

111) About Schmidt

112) The Rainmaker

113) The Strait Story

114) Central Station

115) Cinema Paradiso

116) Motorcycle Diaries

117) Fahrenheit 451

118) Ikiru

119) Ran

120) The Mood for Love

121) The Pianist

122) Dreams

123) Madadayo

124) Red Beard

125) San Juro

126) Dersu Uzala

127) Coffee and Cigarettes

128) Doctor Zhivago

129) Limelight

130) The Kid

131) City Lights

132) The Great Dictator

133) The Gold Rush

134) A king in the York

135) The Circus

136) Paradise Case

137) Rope

138) Psycho

139) The Ring

140) Saving Private Ryan

141) All Quiet in the Western Front

142) Deathwatch

143) Salvador

144) Something Gotta Give

145) Omkara

146) Othello

147) Caligula

148) Run Lola Run

149) Pickpocket

150) Ashes and Diamonds

151) Rashomon

152) Taxi-1, 2, 3

155) After Sunset

156) Sideways

157) Days of Destruction

158) Babel

159) Night at Museum

160) Eragon

161) The Harry Potter Series

164) The Return-Andrei Zvyagintsev

165) Stealing Beauty

166) Freeze Me

167) Easy Sex

168) Pride and Prejudice

169) Kandahar

170) Guru

171) Marie Antoinette

172) Volvar

173) Tsotsi

174) The Wind that Shakes the Barley

175) Unfaithful

176) Basic Instinct-1, 2

178) Femme Fatal

179) Wild Things-1, 2, 3

182) Lulu

183) Titanic

184) Ghost

185) Roman Holiday

186) Out of Africa

187) Casablanca

188) Gone with the Wind

189) The English Patient

190) you’ve Got Mail

191) Kate & Leopard

192) French kiss

193) City of Angels

194) when Harry met Sally

195) Sleepless at Seattle

196) Proof of Life

197) The Against of Ropes

198) Pretty Woman

199) Undiscovered

200) American Beauty

201) Monster- in- Law

202) Mona Lisa Smiles

203) The Last Emperor

204) The Schindler’s List

205) Elizabeth

206) Love is a many slandered thing

207) Khamosh Pani

208) Nishijapan

210) Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead

211) Shakespeare in Love

212) Joan of Ark

213) The Three Musketeers

214) My Fair Lady

215) Alexander

216) Great Expectations

217) Seven Samurai

218) Emma

219) Citizen Cohn

220) Troy

221) Hamlet

222) Ten Commandments

223) Sound of Music

224) Interview with Derrida

225) Edward Said-the last interview

Kandahar: The veiled reality

“I don’t believe that the little flame of knowledge kindled by a report or a film can illuminate the deep ocean of human ignorance.”

"Assuming that cinema is art, trade and industry, and while the European cinema offers sex and violence, the Indian cinema sells dreams and the Iranian cinema tries to sell poetry."

“Why on earth did I make that film?” “I don’t know, but as Pascal put it: ‘The heart has reasons of which the mind is unaware.’

- Mohsen Makhmalbaf, from a conversation with Werner Herzog

If Beizai and Abbas Kiarostami form the twin pillars of Iranian cinema, Mohsen Makhmalbaf represents its strongest component since the advent of the Islamic revolution. Makhmalbaf, who emerged from an underprivileged background and was at first strongly identified with the Islamic regime, is a self-taught filmmaker. His prolific body of work includes 32 films. He overcame a life of poverty and a flirtation with crime to become one of the most celebrated figures in Iranian Cinema. At the age of 17, Makhmalbaf, then the founder of an Islamic Militant group opposed to the Shah, attempted to disarm a policeman. The incident, which Makhmalbaf later revisited in 1996's "A Moment of Innocence", succeeded only in getting Makhmalbaf shot and put in jail. A central figure in Iran’s current movie wave, a prolific novelist, screenwriter and director whose films frequently earn him the wrath of Iranian censors, Mohsen Makhmalbaf is widely known even outside festivals and art-house circles.

Since becoming a filmmaker, Makhmalbaf has written, directed, and edited more than 30 feature films and shorts in addition to writing the scripts for and editing the films of numerous other Iranian directors. His movies have been shown across the globe and have been featured in the international film festival circuit over 1,000 times.

Blessed with extraordinary timing, Kandahar (2001), a Farsi movie, became Makhmalbaf's most popular film to date, even though it returns to the director's angrier, more abrasive period. Unlike his earlier films, Kandahar shows both passion and artistic maturity. Kandahar, addresses both the plight of Afghan women under the Taliban and the accumulated misery of the Afghan people. The film premiered at the Cannes film festival of 2001, but didn't get much attention at first. After 9/11, however, it was widely shown and won accolades worldwide including the Federico Fellini Prize from UNESCO in 2001.

Kandahar or Safar e Ghandehar is a film that tells about a journey towards Kandahar, the second largest city of Afghanistan, undertaken by Nafas, a young female journalist who escaped Afghanistan with her family but must return and race against time in an attempt to rescue her sister. Nafas, an Afghani refugee who fled to Canada when the Taliban came to power, receives word in 1999 that her sister will commit suicide at the last solar eclipse of the millennium due to unbearable conditions under the Taliban, both as a woman and as a casualty of a landmine. As the film proceeds, Nafas learns more and more about the hardships women face under the Taliban, and even more so, how years of war have destroyed Afghan society. The film is inspired by the real-life experience of actress Nelofer Pazira, who plays Nafas. In 1989, she fled her homeland of Afghanistan and later received a similar letter not from a sister, but from a long-time friend who wanted to end her life in a similar situation starting her trek from the Iran-Afghanistan border, Nafas disguises herself as the fourth wife of an elderly Afghan man. As Nafas’ desperation grows (she has only three days to reach Kandahar before her sister kills herself, on the day of the last solar eclipse of the century), the images grow more and more dreamlike. At one point, Nafas encounters a madrasah, where boys with AK47 rifles intone verses from their holy book as a bearded mullah looks on. Later, with the help of an English-speaking African American doctor, she wanders into a Red Cross relief center for mine victims. Nafas’s guide, hidden behind a false beard, points out to her that the only technological progress allowed in the country is weaponry. One healthy man named Sahid continually begs the nurses to let him have a set of legs for his mother -- legs he will no doubt sell on the black market. The doctor guide persuades Sahid, who finally gets a pair of artificial legs, to accompany Nafas in her journey, until they run into a wedding party traveling into Kandahar. Nafas attempts to fit in with the party, but the end of the road is unfortunately near for her. Dressed in burkas, the pair joins a wedding party which is stopped by the Taliban because they are playing musical instruments and singing--forbidden by Afghan law. Her guide is taken away and she is unveiled.Makhmalbaf ominously concludes by showing us Nafas’ point of view as she lowers her burkha,literally and powerfully drawing a veil over her fate. Captured, she seems destined to fall into the same kind of life that she hoped to help her sister escape. Interestingly the film begins and ends with that brilliant shot of lowering of the burkha by Nafas, perhaps reminding us of the famous couplet:

“And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started”.

This shot of the movie, a solar eclipse as seen through the burka’s mesh and its blinding effects seem to have irradiated the heroine into a kind of waking stupor. Nafas’ journey is long and rambling and may have only taken place in her head. But, as the movie’s director Mohsen Makhmalbaf implicitly asks in every scene, what is Afghanistan but a state of mind?

Its final sequence is a Felliniesque wedding procession which Nafas joins in a final bid to reach Kandahar. With its multi-colored burkas and loud chanting, the procession feels vaguely supernatural and it could even represent the final throes of Nafas’ delirium. When the procession is halted by Taliban troops, the dream finally descends into nightmare

It is filmed documentary-style, but the plot is heavily scripted. Also, the English-language dialogue suffers from flat delivery. The protagonist seems phony; every potentially poignant moment is ruined by her deadpan method of speaking.

Visually, the film is stunning at times, especially when one sees the wedding party march in the desert. The sea of burqas in contrasting colors (such as emerald, black, ochre yellow, peach, white, purple, etc.) is absolutely stunning. There's even surrealism when prosthetic legs for land mine victims at a Red Cross camp parachute to the ground

But the quality of the cinematography is not enough to rescue the flawed direction. The vast open spaces also allow Makhmalbaf and his outstanding cinematographer, Ebrahim Ghafouri, to create a steady flow of stunning images, accompanied by Mohammad Reza Darvishi's intoxicating yet spare score.

.

. This is the story of a country that's been ravaged by its own nature, history, economy, politics and the unkindness of its neighbors. The story of Afghanistan is real. However, the movie does not render a fair job in reflecting the background of it. The situation is miserable; but what caused such misery in Afghanistan? Afghanistan has suffered centuries old imperialism at the hands of the British and then the Russian and now Americans who played their Great Game on the chessboard of Eurasia. There is a passage in the movie to the effect that somebody will come to liberate them. Those imperialists came in the name of civilization; French did to Algeria, the British did to India; all in the name of bringing them civilization. It was White Man's Burden to do so. The film focuses in particular on the women and children forced to survive under hostile conditions. Their marginal existence in the desert sands on the border of Iran and Afghanistan reflects their status within the Taliban-ruled country from which they live in exile. Even more dramatically, the film explores the plight of those who have lost limbs from land mines.

Particularly informative is the commentary in English by actress Nelofer Pazira that is included on the DVD. Her comments reveal in eloquent detail not only the making of the film but the rationale behind the creative choices made, often on the fly, as the film crew worked under difficult and dangerous conditions. While western news coverage continues to focus on the military and political aspects of warfare in the Middle East, "Kandahar" does much to reveal the devastating impact on noncombatants. The reason to watch this film is to see the people the heroine meets.

The plot is not very thoroughly developed. The scenery is beautiful, in a stark way, and the plot is barely enough to keep a viewer dramatically involved, but the point is to learn about life in today's Afghanistan.

The Taliban is gone, but the socio-cultural matrix which gave rise to its existence still flourishes in Afghanistan. It will take a lot more than a few years to heal that wounded country
Writing in The New York Times,A.O.Scott noted that both Kandahar and Abbas Kiarostami’s “ABC Africa”(about Ugandan orphans) "contain moment of sublime visual poetry that at once heighten and complicate their humanitarian message”. Even though it deals directly with neither war nor terrorist violence, it is an anti war movie with a difference.

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Biography of Troilokya Bhattacharjya

Biography of Triolokya Bhattacharjya
Troilokya Bhattacharjya
Assamese; b.1939) is a renowned short story writer and novelist of Assam. He had his primary and secondary education in local schools and obtained the B.A. degree from Anandaram Dhekial Phukan college ,Nagaon in 1964.Bhattacharjya studied philosophy for his M.A. in the University of Gauhati in 1966.Besides his mother tongue, he has working knowledge of Bengali ,Hindi, Sanskrit and English .He was acquainted with the major literary creations of the world even while he was a school student and tried to compose poems at that time .Later on he switched over to short story and wrote Doctor-babu in his college magazine of 1962.Deep love for nature and country life dominated his creation up to 1965 in which year Shilalipi(Inscription),a detective short story making the second phase of his literary career was published in Navayug ,a literary weekly edited by Birendrakumar Bhattacharya.Thenceforth he turned his attention to short stories based on history; and Maidam(the grave),the first of the kind was published in Monideep,a monthly magazine edited by Nilmani Phukan in 1966.Bhattacharjya’s novelette Buddhadevar Mirityu(Death of Lord Buddha)based on the Chinese aggression was published in Navayug.He was hailed by the reputed critics as a writer of distinction after the publication of the historical novel,Sanchipater puthi(Book of Sanchi Leaves)which won the first prize in the competition : In search of new writers sponsored by Sahitya Prakash,Guwahati in 1973. Incidentally the book started phase of his literary career. This was followed by another historical novel Charaideo in 1978. Over and above, more than hundred short stories of Troilokya Bhattacharjya have been published in various magazines of Assam. Some of his articles on the burning questions of his native state amply reveal his keen interest in and analytical approach to the problems. A few of his radio-dramas have been broadcast from All India Radio,Guwahati.Deep insight ,subtle delineation of characters coupled with vivid and minute description of incidents are the marked features of his literary creations. With these attributes Bhattacharjya has been able to establish his reputation in genre of literary fiction at a very young age.
Bibliography S.N.Sarma.Asamia Upanyasar Gatidhara (Guwahati, 1976)
From Encyclopedia of Indian Literature Vol.1; Chief Editor: Amaresh Dutta
Sahitya Academy, New Delhi (Assamese Section Editor: Golokchandra Goswami
Entry Contributed by S.N. Sarma.



Posted: 6:38 AM, February 15, 2007
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