Lata Mangeshkar

While Northern India’s 100-year-old film industry is best known for flamboyant dance sequences and romantic plot lines, its directors have begun to step outside established formulas and explore grittier subject matter. This program surveys the world of Bollywood filmmaking, examining the personalities as well as the commercial and thematic concerns that drive central Asia’s answer to Tinseltown. Interviews with directors Karan Johar, Ashutosh Gowariker, and Yash Chopra are included, along with commentary from choreographers, musical directors, and Cinemaya Magazine editor Aruna Vasudev. The industry’s newfound attention to poverty, homelessness, and other social concerns is examined. Several film excerpts are included.

Khandekar’s didactic script for Vinayak continues his preoccupation with the character of a moral man whose principles conflict with practical reality. Manohar (Salvi, who plays this character’s earlier version: Bappa in Vinayak’s Amrit, 1941) is an alcoholic but idealistic public prosecutor and calls for the death sentence for the nationalist anarchist Ravindra (Vinayak). Ravindra’s girlfriend Shashi (Meenakshi) is pregnant and gives birth in an orphanage. She then becomes a nurse and has to look after Manohar who falls for her. She agrees to marry him but keeps her child a secret. When a child is found dead in the orphanage, Manohar prosecutes its humanitarian manager for infanticide. Shashi, who appears as a witness, reveals the truth of her life in court, causing a dramatic change in her husband’s world-view.

The film chronicles the ascent of Shivaji, the great Maratha warrior who fought for liberty from the erstwhile Muslim rulers in order to establish a secular Hindu kingdom.

Major Jaidev saves a politician from the clutches of a dreaded terrorist. However, the terrorist joins hands with his childhood friend Anjali to ruin his life.