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During the struggle for Independence

 P.K.Nair, one of the India’s leading film historians, believes that D.G.Phalke chose mythology for the cinema not only because it was an easy means of communicating to the largest number of people, but also because Phalke saw mythological stories as a way of evoking patriotic feelings in the Indian Nation at a time when the […]

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Golden Age Of Indian Cinema

Golden Age Of Indian Cinema  The 1950s was led film historians to refer to this glorious time as the golden age of Indian Cinema. Film makers created authored and individual works while sticking strictly within the set conventions of the films. The example of Mahatma Gandhi and Prime Minister Nehru’s vision of the newly independent […]

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Themes in Indian cinema

Early Indian cinema in the 1920s was founded on specific genres, such as the mythological or the devotional film. The sum and substance of the mythological theme is the fight between good and evil, and the importance of sacrifice in the name of truth. The retelling of stories known through an oral tradition was an […]

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A BRIEF HISTORY OF INDIAN CINEMA

Indian films are unquestionably the most –seen movies in the world. Not just talking about the billion- strong audiences in India itself, where 12 million people are said to go to the cinema every day, but of large audiences well beyond the Indian subcontinent and the Diaspora, in such unlikely places as Russia, China, the […]

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Karl Marx and Materialism

Until a decade or so ago, there was rather little Marxist analysis in “mainstream” American literary and social thought. This is not to say there were no Marxists: rather, the Marxists were always “voices crying in the wilderness”-not very many people paid heed to these voices or took them seriously. This has been changing in […]

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Indonesia Freedom Movement – 5

Indonesian Nationalism If, as Lowenthal says, heritage preservation is about nationalism, does this work in a post-colonial state?  A project contemporary to the Dutch Historic Urban Center project offers a useful comparison.  Mrs. Suharto’s “Beautiful Indonesia in Miniature Park,” begun in 1971, was more overtly nationalistic.  The project was inspired by Disneyland, and would be […]

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Indonesia Freedom Movement – 4

Contemporary Identity How do these heritage projects work internally to create or shore up national identity?  We can look both at the identity of the Dutch, who retain an interest in Indonesia’s colonial heritage because it is also their heritage, and also at the identity of the Indonesians, who’s colonized past is still part of […]

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Indonesia Freedom Movement – 3

Tourism This first motivation is clearly economic – the city wants to attract tourist money by appealing to the heritage and intellectual interests of tourists, which may or may not reflect the cultural identity of the tourist.  Tourists may be interested in the restored Dutch Historic Urban Center and the National Archives Building because of […]

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