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Umbra is a quarterly newspaper on screen culture published by Lightcube out of India. Its pages feature major developments in the sectors of film preservation, film archiving, film society activism, funding for alternative films and film literature. Its focus is to establish a broad narrative or a lineage between the state of these areas in the past and their condition in the present. To this aim, Umbra runs a number of interviews, essays, program notes, festival coverage, listings and annotated filmographies in its issues.

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From the Urban Lens: Alexander Bambach's Zwischenstation (Stopover)

Zwischenstation, was one of the two films to be screened at the Festival, that featured homeless men who collect scrap bottles for a living, as their subjects. The film derives its title from their brief stay under a Munich City bridge. Or

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From The Urban Lens : Abhinava Bhattacharyya's 'Jamnapaar'

Jamnapaar (2017) lurks on the river's edge seeking to explore how the inhabitants of the Yamuna relate to its degraded presence, the fragile nostalgia of an unknowable past and the horror of its unthinkable future [citation]. The film has a

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'Let's talk, but not about men' - Alison Bechdel's 'The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For'

A work of fiction involving two women, who are talking to each other about something other than a man, is the premise of the Bechdel Test. The test, co-conceived by Liz Wallace, gained ground after its first appearance in Alison Bechdel’s 'Dykes

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In conversation with Sanal Sasidharan of Sexy Durga Fame

The Interview with the producer of the widely contraversial film 'Sexy Durga'. This interview brings insights into the film maker's life, his technique, his views on God and his struggle as a filmaker. This interview is from our Issue 8, called 'Our

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Film Focus - Naya Pata by Pawan. K. Shrivastava

The second part in the two part series based on the film - Naya Pata by Pawan. K. Shrivastava which takes forward the conversation on Migration and Displacement.' I was born in a town in the Chhapra district of Bihar. Numerous industries had

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A Movable Island - An Interview with Sourav Sarangi

The narrative of post-independence India is marred with mass migration, displacement and exodus. With the Nehruvian focus placed firmly on the ‘city’ as the portal to the future, rural centers all over the country have eroded as generations of

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Live from IHC: On Christian Shwochow's 'Cracks in the Shell'

The image of the tortured artist has been prevalent in all fields of art and culture. It is taken for granted that in order to be a notable artist, one has suffer through some form of unimaginable pain preferably a broken heart. Mental health

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Live from IHC: On Ziad Doueiri's 'The Insult'

The pivotal scene in The Insult consists of the exhibition of archival footage from Darmour in the court. We learn eventually that Tony – our chief plaintiff in the film, belongs to Darmour too. The footage seems to reveal the origins of his

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Live from IHC: Interview with Sebastiano Riso

Our coverage of the 2018 edition of the Habitat International Film Festival continues with Sebastiano Riso, director of Una Famiglia,  was in competition at Venice International Film Festival 2017 and was recently screened at Habitat

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Live from IHC: Interview with acclaimed film-critic Dita Rietuma

Our coverage of the 2018 edition of the Habitat International Film Festival commences with our interview of Dita Rietuma, an acclaimed critic, academician, and now, a bureaucrat from Latvia. In 2014, she became director of the National Film Center.

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From the Lakeside: Julia Staniszewska's 'Three Conversations on Life'

  Julia is an atheist, while her mother a devout Catholic doctor. Julia undergoes IVF treatment, but the decision is met with strong disapproval from her mother, who condemns the ‘unnatural’ nature of the scientific intervention in

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From the Lakeside: Damien Froidevaux's 'Death of the Serpent God'

  Koumba has lived in Paris from the age of 2 till 20, when a street brawl that goes awry invites a background check. Her immigration papers are revealed to be fake due to a negligence on her family’s part, and she is deported back to Senegal

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From the Lakeside: Piotr Stasik's, '21 x New York'

The first in a series of reviews from our coverage of the 2018 edition of the Lakeside Doc Festival at Naukuchiatal. New York is a massive metropolis that makes people lose a sense of their self - just like any other major city from across

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Wings of Desire

The desire to share and to be a part of something is very integral to the existence of even demons. Snehalatha Ramappa and Bharathy Singaravel explore this deeply methaphorical piece which talks about humanizing demons and also exploring the

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The Mother and The Whore: Women in Indian Cinema

The following is an excerpt from a piece written by Krishna Chaudhari, entitled, ‘The Image of Women in Indian Cinema’, included in the Feb-March 1982 issue of Cine Woman, the official journal of India’s first International Forum of Women’s

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A Roundtable with Leading Indian Contemporary Documentary Filmmakers

When it comes to contemporary Indian cinema, the documentary is where all the action is at. The sector is constituted by brief but significant bodies of work that establish their own peculiar engagements with the world at large, and yet, a similar

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The Cut-out Messiah

Mardur Gopalan Ramachandran was the face that could do no wrong in the public eye. He was the golden poster child of the DMK until his fall from grace. His expulsion triggered a massive backlash from his fan base (aside of being considerable they

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A Very Warm Summer

Satyabrata Ghosh recounts his memories of the films of Anand Patwardhan and the particularly torrid early summer of 1992, where the effect of television images broadcast by the state news channel would be negated by those stored on a VHS-brick that

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The Resistance Against Invisibility: On 'The Other Love Story'

Through a reading of Roopa Rao’s independent web-series, The ‘Other’ Love Story (TOLS), Kashish Dua focuses on the integrated subversion of mainstream Hindi cinema and dominant hetero-patriarchal frameworks, highlighting the temporal

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Chronicles of a Graveyard

The humble Radio that has lived for more than a century and moved from the experimental existence to a household commonality is becoming invisible gradually. Globally, radio revolutionised the communication scenario and made it possible for people

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Ambush at the Doorstep: Malik Sajjad's 'Munnu'

While the turmoil that the Valley is mired in is not new, Malik Sajad's autobiographical graphic novel, Munnu, goes beyond the popular perception of the ‘Kashmir issue’ as an offspring of the Partition, and mines precedents for the extant

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Filmmaking in Qatar: A Strife for Cultural Identity in a Globalized World

In a globalized era of filmmaking, it is imperative to understand how a country like Qatar, with a cumulative space for filmmaking, is developing its inner apparatus and industry to match Hollywood on one hand, and the urge to preserve its identity

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The Call of the New: The Film Society Movement in the Future

From the Vaults: Issue 1 (Aug-Sept 2013) The film society movement started with the aim to demarcate the vulgarized mainstream cinema that was regularly projected in cinemas and cinema as Art, writes H N Narahari Rao, Secretary, FIPRESCI

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A Hundred Years of Amnesia

A city that rejects its architectural heritage – while expressing a preference for glass and concrete – ends up endangering its future. Patna seems to be on growth steroids, with its residents seduced by the appearance of ‘big buildings’ on

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The Keeper of All Things Ordinary

Pushpa Rawat is an emerging independent filmmaker who uses her camera to initiate a very personal dialogue with all the components of her immediate environment. Her films — Nirnay and Mod (a film supported by the Tata Institute of Social Sciences)

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To See With One's Own Eyes

Sanal Sasidharan’s first two films, Oralpokkam and Ozhivudivasathe Kali, got him a lot of recognition and praise at home, but his third film, Sexy Durga, propelled him to international fame when it won the Hivos Tiger award at Rotterdam. Suraj

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On Finding Life in Death: Interview with Thomas Lüchinger and Samuel Kellenberger

From the 5th Lakeside Doc Festival, Naukuchiatal, 14-17 April, 2017 Thomas Lü​chinger's filmography is generously sprinkled with philosophical ideas, particularly those of Buddhism and the Baha'i faith. At the 5th Lakeside Documentary Festival

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Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep

An email from Anuj, rather wistful, pushed us to make an effort to visit Regal cinema in Connaught Place for its last show ever. Although we were aware of the ancient cinema closing down that very day, somehow it did not upset me enough.

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The Place is Waiting: Interview with Roop Ghai

A Still from SangamAt a recently concluded documentary film festival, I watched an Alexandru Belc film, Cinema Mon Amour, about its manager’s struggle to keep one of the very last cinemas in Romania alive and functional. The camera follows the

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COLUMNS:ARCHIVAL, INTERVIEW, FESTIVAL, TECHREVIEW, FUTURE TRENDS, CAMPUS, EXCLUSIVES, REAR VIEW
EDITOR: SUMEET KAUR    MANAGING EDITOR: ISHAAN BANERJEE
CONSULTANT: SANJAY WADHWA    WEB ARCHITECT: SURAJ PRASAD
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Umbra is published by Lightcube Film Society
UMBRA@LIGHTCUBE.IN | 9851737307 | 7838340196

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Institution, Print        

Print editions of the current issue and future issues delivered by post for a year.

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Print editions of the present and future issues, along with institutional access to download the journal's current issue, along with its archive of past issues.

Individual, Digital         

Access to download the journal's current issue, along with its archive of past issues.

Individual, Print          

Print editions of the current issue and future issues delivered by post for a year.

Individual, Print + Digital        

Print editions of the present and future issues along with access to download the journal's current issue, along with its archive of past issues.

Institution, Digital        

Institutional access to download the journal's current issue, along with its archive of past issues.

Institution, Print        

Print editions of the current issue and future issues delivered by post for a year.

Institution, Print + Digital        

Print editions of the present and future issues, along with institutional access to download the journal's current issue, along with its archive of past issues.