Cafe de cult features articles from the editorial desk on numerous topics ranging from travel, lifestyle, cuisines, social work, to different forms of performing arts such as various dance forms, faith,linguistics, sculpture et. al. This section thrives on views from our readers and any inputs( read- articles/ bytes/quait destinations) they would like to share with fellow culturazzos. So pick up that writers pen and scribble away.

Jim Jarmusch’s Indie-Genius Cinema
image

Every now and then, when people start saying “Indie is dead”, there comes a filmmaker, who contradicts them and redefines the course of cinema – both mainstream and parallel. John Cassavetes had ridiculed the American mainstream cinema and its incessant thriving on extravagance with his Shadows (1959). Cut to the 1980’s when gangsters were ruling Hollywood. Enter Jim Jarmusch with the short film Stranger Than Paradise (1982) which humiliated Hollywood with its normal characters and simple situations. Independent cinema was never…

image John Cassavetes: self-indulgence or sheer elegance?

American underground cinema has undoubtedly been boosted by the arrival of John Cassavetes whose freedom and fluidity of characters and their emotions felt as a lease of oxygen in a studio driven defunct industry. However, not everyone has able to accept his works with arms wide open. It seems as though the whole of Cassavetes film can be summed up in the term – self-indulgence. What is self indulgence? Is Cassavetes work so alien that one is not able to accept them?

image Sculptures In Time - The Films of Andrei Tarkovsky

Andrei Tarkovsky’s whole new percept of cinema helped discovering newer boundaries to the medium and aided the formation of some of the greatest directors of the future. Though Andrei Tarkovsky’s canon consisted of only seven features, three student films, one documentary and a couple of stage plays and there were more unrealized projects than filmed ones, each of the ideas that were completed were gems and remain unparalleled to dateLooking back, each one seems hand picked and “sculpted” second…

image Dulcet canvas of emotions - four films by Majid Majidi

Iranian cinema was first put on the map when the films of Abbas Kiarostami caught the attention of the west. The avant-garde style and the peculiar yet totally fresh concept of “plotlessness” impressed the critics, invariably, throughout the world. After Kiarostami had made way for Iranian filmmakers to venture into the international scenario, it was up to the new generation to develop a stronghold and reserve a unique place for the cinema of their country without mimicking their forerunner…

image Rendering with Pen and Ink by Robert W. Gill

As a person who loves art, I have been struggling to learn the techniques of perspective and technical drawings. The practice of these techniques improves the way the eye views the object and the hands recreate them. Detail and character becomes the core of the sketch, making each artist unique and  attentive. Now, every [...]