Blakwall

  For the uninitiated, these pictures are screengrabs from the 2015 Tamil language film, Visaranai, directed by Vetrimaaran. The film is based on the book "Lock Up" by M. Chandrakumar. When I started watching the film, it appeared to be a film about linguistic divide and the sort of hegemony that locals tend to exert over immigrants. Boy, was I wrong! This is nothing like that. Visaranai kept me hooked to it. It took me a long time to unravel my mind and actually come to terms with the entire film. It is an ugly film that was shot beautifully, with actors who have done immense justice to their roles. Visaranai means Interrogation. Or at least that's what Google tells me. The film begins in Andhra Pradesh where we first meet some of the characters of the film, a small group of Tamil immigrants. They are soon picked up by the police and their life turns upside down. Beaten up by the police to coerce a confession out of them, our four Tamil immigrants are forced to be the sc

Unsane (2018) Director: Steven Soderbergh. Unsane tells the story of Sawyer Valentini who finds herself unwillingly locked up in a psychiatric hospital after an interview with a therapist. Sawyer talks to her therapist about her previous suicidal tendencies for being relentlessly stalked by a David Strine. Based on this and that she did not look at the forms she signed, she finds herself stripped of her clothes, phone and gets told, she voluntarily committed herself to the hospital. Her fellow inmate, Nate, however reveals to her that her incarceration was part of an insurance scam run by the company. She is placed in a ward next to a seemingly violent woman who threatens to cut her. Trapped in an unwanted situation, Sawyer lashes out verbally & physically, leading the staff to drug her and strap her down.  It is here in the hospital that she seemingly runs into her stalker who is a member of the staff called George. But we don't know if she's telling the truth

At a time when Black Lives Matter movement is bringing forth the deep embedded racism in the United States, when racist people are being called out and racism deniers are trying to hog the limelight, The Nickel Boys serves as a testament to the truth beneath it all. Set during the era of the Civil Rights Movement, Colson Whitehead tells the story of Elwood Curtis. Elwood is a serious young boy, getting good grades and working hard at Mr. Marconi's Tobacco and Cigars shop. He's kept on tstraight and narrow by his grandmother, Harriet. Elwood listens to Dr. Martin Luther King and conducts himself according to the ideals. But as luck would have it, he is sent to the Nickel Academy, a juvenile reform school. The school claims to turn delinquent boys to honourable men. But that is all on the surface. Inside the campus of the reform school, Elwood sees the horror white men can exert when he is beaten senseless for standing up for a fellow inmate. It is here in the school

Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata. The book revolves around Keiko Furukura, a thirty six year old oddball, who spent the last eighteen years of her life working at a convenience store. The fact that she does not conform to the society is set from the very beginning of the book. Keiko recalls incidents from her childhood, that to her were normal, but caused distress to others. But to Keiko, being a convenience store worker was a revelation. She has a manual on how to behave with customers. She copies her fellow workers' expressions, speech patterns and behaviours to fit in. If they express anger at something, so does she. Even when with friends, she reacts to situations as her convenience store co-workers would do. Her life revolves around the store.  But to her parents and sister, she needs to be cured. Her friends and their husbands question her lifestyle and her dead end job, suggest her to find someone to, even offering to set her up. Things take a funny turn when Shiraha

Post 2014, after Bhartiya Janata Party took center-stage in India, the India-United States relations saw a few surprising turns. One of those was the then US President Barack Obama’s invitation to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. It is important here to note that PM Modi had been barred from entering the country over U.S. concerns about the 2002 massacre of Muslims in the state of Gujarat, which occurred when Modi was the state’s chief minister. Until the US Presidential elections in 2016 which led to Donald Trump being elected as the 58th President of America, the Indo-American relations under PM Modi and Obama saw some milestones. On his first visit as the Prime Minister of India, Modi met a huge crowd at New York’s Madison Square Garden. It was during this visit that PM Modi and President Obama reach agreement on a memorandum of understanding between the Export-Import Bank and an Indian energy agency, which provided up to $1 billion to help India develop low-carbon energy

When we talk about Television or any media and propaganda, Joseph Goebbels is perhaps the most infamous name that comes to mind. The Reich Minister of Propaganda used his position to influence newspapers, theatres, art galleries, radio broadcasts and the cinema. His vision was that of an empire that would control schools, universities, film, radio and television. He wrote, “The national education of the German people will be placed in my hands.” His mission to sell Nazi ideology was a success Goebbels started the work for Adolf Hitler to control the German people. Even after this death, Goebbels remains a shadow behind the workings of media, be it TV, newspapers or social media. One other name associated with Nazi propaganda in media is the German film director and actress, Leni Riefenstahl.  Although she went onto deny her Nazi connections and feigned ignorance of Hitler’s atrocities on the Jews, her contribution to Nazi propaganda cannot be forgotten. She was famous for t