What a time to be living in. Who would have thought even a few weeks ago that we would be practising self-isolation in varying degrees of c...
What a time to be living in. Who would have thought even a few weeks ago that we would be practising self-isolation in varying degrees of comfort, working from home (or at least pretending to), and scrubbing centuries of dirt off our hands? There are some advantages for the privileged who are in self-quarantine due to the coronavirus pandemic: as the days stretch on, seemingly forever, they finally have the time to watch or re-watch films and documentaries from around the world.
Over the next few weeks, Scroll.in will be bringing you watchlists of varying sizes grouped around themes. The first list features 21 titles that deconstruct the art and allure of motion pictures. These films-within-films bring out unseen aspects of the storytelling process, examine characters typically found lurking around the sets, and question the artifice involved in the creation of cinema.
If cinema is the seventh art, meta-cinema can be counted as the eight-and-a-half portion.
The list is potted rather than definitive, and some titles are missing because they are not available on any platform, legitimate or otherwise (such as Khamosh, which converts a movie set into a crime scene, or Shukno Lanka, starring Mithun Chakraborty as an extra).
Streaming on a screen very close to you
Nayak
Satyajit Ray’s 1966 production...
