CLASSIC CINEMA SERIES

Film: Earth (1998) – Canada / India
Language: Urdu with English subtitles
Director: Deepa Mehta
Screenplay: Deepa Mehta – Based on the Novel, Ice Candy Man, by Bapsi Sidhwa
Awards: Filmfare Awards for Best Debut Actors to Rahul Khanna & Nandita Das
Cast: Aamir Khan, Nandita Das, Rahul Khanna, Maia Sethna, Babby Singh, Kitu Gidwani, Raghubir Yadav, Arif Zakaria, Eric Peterson, Gulshan Grover, Kulbhushan Kharbanda, Jaaved Jaaferi.

Based upon Bapsi Sidhwa's novel, originally published as ‘Ice Candy Man’ (1988, UK) and as the second installment in Deepa Mehta's elemental trilogy (following ‘Fire’ and preceding ‘Water’), ‘Earth ‘stands alone as a potent, unforgettable masterpiece about how political borders destroy human lives.

Set in Lahore, Deepa Mehta's 1998 film ‘Earth’ is a haunting, powerful look at the 1947 partition of India and Pakistan through the innocent eyes of a young polio-stricken Parsi girl named Lenny, who narrates the story through the voice of her adult self. Coming from a wealthy family who hope to remain neutral to the rising tensions between Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims in the area, she is adored and protected by her parents, Bunty and Rustom, and cared for by Shanta-her Hindu Ayah Both Dil Navaz (the Ice-Candy Man) and Hassan (the Masseur) are in love with Shanta. The three are part of a small group of friends from different faiths who spend their days together in a park. With the violence of partition, however, this once unified group of friends becomes divided and tragedy ensues...

Lenny becomes a first- hand observer of the violence of Partition as sectarian hatred reaches her without an adult filter. The screenplay does not treat Partition as an isolated political catastrophe but shows how it seeps into existing relationships and corrupts them from within...

CLASSIC CINEMA SERIES

Film: Eat Drink Man Woman (1994) – Taiwan
Language: Mandarin & French with English subtitles
Director: Ang Lee
Screenplay: Ang Lee, James Schamus & Hui-Ling Wang
Awards: Academy Award Nomination for Best Foreign Film
Cast: Sihung Lung, Kuei-Mei Yang, Wang Yu-wen, Chien-lien Wu, Sylvia Chang, Winston Chao, Chen Chao-jung

The story revolves around the Zhu family navigating the challenges of love, life, and family as they transition from tradition to modernity. The story is also about the special emphasis of food in their lives. A widower, who works as an aging master chef at a hotel, lives a lonely life at home with his three single daughters. The old man is a great chef but a terrible communicator, and has no clue about what is going on in the lives of his daughters. However, the only way he can communicate with his daughters is via the ritualized Sunday feast he prepares every week. He would like to see them married but is too repressed to talk about it, and they would like to leave the house but don’t know how to!
The film comes alive during vivid scenes of exotic food being prepared as the chef uses cooking as an act of control, as a ritual, as the last language left to man who has lost the ability to communicate with his family. The love the father feels for his daughters is manifested in the complexities of the dishes he prepares for them. As the daughters gain strength to reveal their plans to depart from home it is the old man who instead shocks them with his own plans which frees his daughters from their obligation!

Film: It Was Just an Accident (2025) – Iran
Language: Persian / Azerbaijani with English subtitles
Director: Jafar Panahi
Screenplay: Jafar Panahi, Nader Saeivar, Shadmehr Rastin, Mehdi Mahmoudisn
Awards: Academy Award Nomination for International Feature & Screenplay
Cast: Vahid Mobasseri, Mariam Afshari, Ebrahim Azizi, Hadis Pakbaten, Majid Panahi, Mohamad Ali Elyasmehr, Dalmaz Najafi
A tense, slow-burn thriller about trauma, revenge, and the blurry lines between justice and wrongdoing... a complex tale about human nature, about people trying to reclaim their dignity after being dehumanized, and it asks whether it’s possible to hold onto your humanity while staring down the person you believe destroyed it. It’s tense, emotional and uncomfortably honest, and it’s one of the best films of the year. ..
The story begins with a man (Ebrahim Azizi) driving his family home at night when he is involved in a minor traffic accident. Seeking help at a nearby repair shop, he is met by Vahid (Vahid Mobasseri), who hears the man’s squeaking prosthetic leg and becomes convinced the man is the prison torturer who once brutalized him.

What follows is a tense claustrophobic journey as Vahid becomes unsure whether his impulsive act has caught the right man. He gathers a group of others to confirm the captive’s identity – wedding photographer Shiva (Mariam Ashari) bride-to-be Goli (Hadis Paak Baten), her fiancé Ali (Majid Panahi), and the volatile Hamid (Mohamad Ali Elyasmehr). All but Ali were once victims of the man they call ‘‘Peg Leg”. As they debate the man’s fate the lines between justice and vengeance blur.

Language: Arabic with English subtitles
Director: Kaouther Ben Hania
Screenplay: Kaouther Ben Hania

Cast: Saja Kilani, Motaz Malhees, Amer Hlehel, Clara Khoury, Nesbet Serhan, Ramy Brahem, Firas Khoury, Ali Talel Yacoub
Awards: Academy Award Nomination for Best International Feature Film.

• “The Voice of Hind Rajab” has won around 10 awards so far. It earned the Grand Jury Prize at the 82nd Venice International Film Festival plus six parallel awards: ARCA CinemaGiovani, CICT‑UNESCO Enrico Fulchignoni, Croce Rossa Italiana, Edipo Re, Leoncino d’Oro, Sorriso Diverso Venezia, and UNIMED. It also snagged the Audience Award at San Sebastián, the Grand Prize at Film Fest Gent, a Jury Award at Chicago International Film Festival, the Brizzola Family Foundation Award at Hamptons, and the Cinema for Peace Dove at the Cinema for Peace Awards.

The film uses the real audio recording of the heart-wrenching voice of Hind Rajab, while fictionally reconstructing the drama of the emergency responders in the call-center office, with real people played by actors, talking, shouting and emoting in response to the voice of the little girl... A taut docu-drama that combines real-life imagery and sounds to create a haunting depiction of war- a harrowing portrait of an attempted rescue that is captivating and emotionally intense...
The film unfolds like a thriller by following the drama in a call center in almost real time. A man receives a dispatch at the Red Crescent call center. It is a request from a man in Germany desperate for the Palestinian response center to connect with his brother in Gaza, who is trapped in a car with his family. The call is heeded and the man briefly connects with a young woman in the car. She frantically mentions that tanks are beside them and that Israeli soldiers are shooting.

As bullets pop violently she screams in horror and the call goes dead. When the man calls back to ease his fear that the worst has happened, a little girl answers the phone. She is six years old and her name is Hind. She is alone, and very scared...

Film: City of Joy (1992) – UK/France
Language: English
Director: Rolland Joffe
Screenplay: Mark Medoff, based on the book by Dominique Lapierre
Cast: Patrick Swayze, Om Puri, Pauline Collins, Shabana Azmi, Ayesha Dharkar, Art Malik, Iftekhar, Sam Wanamaker
A spiritually sensitive film set in the slums of Calcutta about everyday heroism through the stories of a burnt-out American doctor and a poor Indian rickshaw driver. It is at its best when the director pulls back from the story to capture the squalid pageantry of Calcutta itself: its foul air, its fetid water, its contagious hovels...

Three lives become intertwined in a very poor area of Calcutta. Joan Bethel (Pauline Collins) runs a free clinic there. Max Lowe (Patrick Swayze), a disillusioned American surgeon who is set up, robbed and beaten by some local “godfathers” while on vacation, is treated at her clinic. Hasari Pal (Om Puri), who has brought his family to Calcutta in a desperate search for work after his farm was repossessed during a drought, helps bring the wounded doctor to the clinic. From there, the film’s theme is the conflict between those trying to make a difference and those who want everything to stay just as it is.
The film is an abashed celebration of hope and fraternity and calls attention to some of the important truths in life, the overwhelming disparity between rich and poor, and especially the humanity common to us all.

Language: Mandarin & French with English subtitles

Director: Ang Lee

Screenplay: Ang Lee, James Schamus & Hui-Ling Wang

Awards: Academy Award Nomination : Best Foreign Film

Cast: Sihung Lung, Kuei-Mei Yang, Wang Yu-wen, Chien-lien Wu, Sylvia Chang, Winston Chao, Chen Chao-jung

The story revolves around the Zhu family navigating the challenges of love, life, and family as they transition from tradition to modernity. The story is also about the special emphasis of food in their lives.

A widower, who works as an aging master chef at a hotel, lives a lonely life at home with his three single daughters. The old man is a great chef but a lousy communicator, and has no clue about what is going on in the lives of his daughters.However, the only way he can communicate with his daughters is via the ritualized Sunday feast he prepares every week. He would like to see them married but is too repressed to talk about it, and they would like to leave the house but don’t know how to.

The film comes alive during vivid scenes of exotic food being prepared as the chef uses cooking as an act of control, as a ritual, as the last language left to man who has lost the ability to communicate with his family. The love the father feels for his daughters is manifested in the complexities of the dishes he prepares for them. As the daughters gain strength to reveal their plans to depart from home it is the old man who instead shocks them with his own plans which frees his daughters from their obligation...

Film: House of Flying Daggers (2004) – China
Language: Mandarin with English subtitles
Director: Zhang Yimou
Screenplay: Feng Li, Bin Wang & Zhang Yimou
Awards: Academy Award Nomination for Cinematography
Cast: Takesh Kaneshiro, Andy Lau, Ziyi Zhang, Dandan Song, Hongfei Zhao, Jun Guo
An epic romance inflamed with breathless sensuality and jaw-dropping visuals focuses on the process of love, emotions and feelings under the guise of a martial arts movie.A film that is a wild riot of colour, music, passion, action, mystery, pure old-fashioned thrills, and even dancing.
A blind revolutionary (Ziyi Zhang) is caught in a love triangle between two policemen (Andy Lau and Takeshi Kaneshiro) who enlist her in the hunt to track down a gang of secret assassins known as the Flying Daggers. The two men close in on the blind girl, and their triangulated relationship is a fraught drama of double-cross and triple-cross, where nothing is as it seems, and whose impostures conceal a passionate, tragic love story. The trio trek across the ravaged beauty of Tang Dynasty China (actually shot in the Ukraine) and it sets the scene for some truly incredible action scenes as CGI daggers cut through the air at improbable speeds, cavalry charge through fields of flowers and a bamboo forest erupts into a gloriously intricate vertical battle. The director uses landscape as a mirror of the predicament of his characters confusion. A snow storm suggests ruthless, icy intentions. Martial arts have rarely been filmed with such artistry.

Language: English

Director: Peter Weir

Screenplay: David Williamson & Peter Weir, based on the novel by C.J. Koch

Awards: Academy Award:Best Supporting Actress (Linda Hunt)

Cast: Mel Gibson, Sigourney Weaver, Linda Hunt, Bembol Roco, Michael Murphy, Ali Nur, Bill Kerr

A suspenseful tale of intrigue and a sweeping romance set in Indonesia during the overthrow of President Sukarno during the events of 1965 in Jakarta amidst a growing division in politics.

The film revolves around an Australian journalist (Mel Gibson) who goes to the city to cover the events with the aid of a Chinese-Australian (Linda Hunt) while falling for an assistant (Sigourney Weaver) . The film plays into a lot of drama that occurs in Indonesia during a tumultuous period of civil and social unrest where foreign correspondents try to understand what is going on.

The setting of the story is vibrant and unique – Indonesia during the Sixties. It recreates the period in stunning detail – the slums, the sweaty cramped offices, seedy bars, plush hotels, and poverty rubbing shoulders with elegance. While the film was shot in Australia and the Philippines, it was banned in Indonesia until 2000.

Film: In Custody (1994) – UK / India
Language: Urdu with English subtitles
Director: Ismail Merchant
Screenplay: Shahrukh Hussain & Anita Desai
Awards: National Film Award for Shashi Kapoor
Cast: Shashi Kapoor, Shabana Azmi, Om Puri, Sushma Seth, Neena Gupta, Tinnu Anand, Parikshat Sahni, Amjad Khan
An adaptation of Anita Desai’s novel which explores cultural and linguistic heritage along with decay in human relationships and the disappointments of life.
The narrative centers on Deven Sharma (Om Puri), a timid Hindi professor in Mirpur, lured by his friend Murad (Tinnu Anand) to interview Nur Shahjehanabadi (Shashi Kapoor), a fading Urdu poet. Deven seeks escape from his mundane life but finds Nur surrounded by chaos—drunken admirers, jealous wives, and personal decline. The plot unfolds as a comedy of errors, with Deven becoming the reluctant custodian of Nur’s final poems. Deven, who was the lifelong admirer of Nur's work, finds the man in pitiable condition, a far cry from his literary genius.
Merchant directs with a focus on character depth and balances subtle humor and melancholy to reflect Deven’s internal struggle. The portrayal of Urdu’s decline serves as a backdrop, treated with respect yet critiqued through Nur’s decadent lifestyle. The music underscores ghazals and poems by Faiz Ahmed Faiz, enhancing the authenticity of the film's central narrative. Faiz's poetry is used throughout the film as Nur's words. Merchant filmed in Bhopal to capture authentic settings, avoiding studio sets.

Film - The Last Samurai (2003) - USA
Language - English
Director - Edward Zwick
Screenplay - Edward Zwick, John Logan, Marshall Herskovitz
Academy Award Nominations - Supporting Actor (Ken Watanabe), Art Direction, Costume Design, Sound
Cast - Tom Cruise, Ken Watanabe, William Atherton, Billy
Connolly, Tony Goldwyn, Timothy Spall

"Beautifully designed, intelligently written, acted with conviction, it's an uncommonly thoughtful epic" ...Robert Ebert of Chicago Sun- Times
The scope of the film is grand, and all its elements - from the cinematography, to the acting, to its beautiful score - all work to enhance it along the way...

The film is about war, the modernization of a country, and about the violent push and pull between progress and tradition.The Last Samurai is a 2003 American epic period action drama film . The plot was inspired by the 1877 Satsuma Rebellion , led by Saigo Takamori, and the Westernisation of Japan by foreign powers. Japan hires an American Civil War veteran ( Tom Cruise) to train their army with modern warfare techniques in order to fight against the all-powerful Samurai clans. However, his life changes in profound ways when he is captured by the Samurai during battle, and he comes into contact with their leader (Ken Watanabe). He slowly comes to love the culture of the very people he has come to destroy.

In 1876, former U.S Army Captain Nathan Algren, an alcoholic traumatized by his actions during the American Indian Wars, is approached by his former commanding officer, Colonel Bagley. Bagley asks him to train the newly created Imperial Japanese Army for a Japanese businessman, Matsue Omura, who intends to use the army to suppress a Samurai rebellion against Japan's new emperor. Tom Cruise portrays Nathan Algren, an American captain- whose personal and emotional conflicts bring him into contact with Samurai warriors in the wake of the Meiji restoration in 19th. Century Japan...

The Last Samurai grossed a total of $456 million at the box office and became the sixth highest grossing fimof 2003.It received praise for the acting, visuals, cinematography and score. It was nominated for several awards, including four Academy Awards, three Golden Globe Awards, and two National Board of Review Awards.