Bah Rana- Leit Suk / Alan Lyndem Nga kynmaw bad nga ju їoh-i ia i Bah Rana Kharkongor ha kito ki por ma nga dang…
Category: Video
The documentary flows at walking speed. The grandness comes across in the sound of water and the people will take a viewer more than a few minutes to get accustomed to. Luckily, the music, the voices of the people and the cinematography help. Overall, this documentary is an example of a new kind of love (or devotion) that a new generation of people feels towards their planet. Let’s hope that the world listens.
We, 12 staff of The Shillong Times, stand in solidarity with the three senior journalists—EM Jose (News Editor), Nabamita Mitra (Features Editor) and Dipankar Roy (Executive Editor)— whose services were terminated for “Covid-19 generated reasons” with effect from September 1, when they were in quarantine, although they were served the letters only on September 7; no prior intimation was given to them…
Tiktok has been the social media of choice for working-class self-expression in recent times.
Watch a selection and read about the politics of it all
Torrential rains, this monsoon like every other has worsened the flood situation in Assam. This year already around 1.1 million people have been affected in 23 districts and the fatalities due to flood this year has gone up to 24 and counting. While the state administration is doing its best to tackle the situation, locals of villages near the rivers are being moved to safer places as their villages are being inundated by flood waters. Soon the public cry will be about the ineffectual bureaucracy and aid programs on the ground as lakhs of rupees will be once again spent and pocketed.
māti is a short documentary film (22 minutes) that attempts to understand this annual cycle. This film is in Assamese and English (with subtitles in English) and remains institutionally unfunded, made in partnership with the local communities by the river.
While the world struggles against COVID19 pandemic, India’s music loving Supreme Leader, Sri (216) Narendra Modi appealed to the Indians to self impose a curfew on 22nd March from 5.00am to 9.00pm with a proviso that at 5.00 pm all Indians shall step out and make a noise to show their appreciation for the health professionals. Like loyal citizens, Indians came out in droves, they danced, they hugged, they screamed and enjoyed their Social Distancing. These videos are some of the best examples of Indians having Corona fun.
While the world struggles against COVID19 pandemic, India’s music loving Supreme Leader, Sri (216) Narendra Modi appealed to Indians to self impose a curfew on 22nd March from 5.00am to 9.00pm with a proviso that at 5.00 pm all Indians shall step out and make a noise to show their appreciation for the health professionals. Like loyal citizens, Indians came out in droves, they danced, they hugged, they screamed and enjoyed their Social Distancing. These videos are some of the best examples of Indians having Corona fun.
My question is this: is it ok for the Prime Minister of this country to lie to us but a criminal offence and a security threat for us people to have a laugh?
SOULMATE was formed in Shillong, in October 2003 when Rudy Wallang and Tipriti Kharbangar decided to start a band dedicated to playing the Blues and committed to spread awareness about the music to the rest of India, whether the country was ready or not. Rudy was already a legend in North East India, making his name with the region’s most respected and seminal bands like Great Society and Mojo, while Tipriti was the little girl with the big pipes whom everyone knew was going places.
What makes an artist, or at what moment, does the realization of artistic gift happen? Moments of epiphany, or realization, are always, especially for artists themselves, difficult to pinpoint; even with hindsight and retrospection. It’s best left to interpreters – filmmakers or memoirists; and fiction, that with all its allusions and suggestiveness, can help shed light, on what makes possible the creative process. This piece looks at some films on writers; how their lives were shaped indelibly by their art.
n India’s resource-rich Meghalaya State, demand for coal is transforming the environment and the people who depend on it. Coal mine owners are prospering from booming production, but few laws regulate the dangerous and polluting practice known as “rat-hole” mining. Until now.
Being different is no crime. Being gay is not a sin. And for a gay person to desire and pursue love and marriage and family is no more selfish or sinful than when a straight person desires and pursues the very same things. The Song of Songs tells us that King Solomon’s wedding day was “the day his heart rejoiced.” To deny to a small minority of people, not just a wedding day, but a lifetime of love and commitment and family is to inflict on them a devastating level of hurt and anguish. There is nothing in the Bible that indicates that Christians are called to perpetuate that kind of pain in other people’s lives rather than work to alleviate it, especially when the problem is so easy to fix. All it takes is acceptance. The Bible is not opposed to the acceptance of gay Christians, or to the possibility of loving relationships for them. And if you are uncomfortable with the idea of two men or two women in love, if you are dead-set against that idea, then I am asking you to try to see things differently for my sake, even if it makes you uncomfortable. I’m asking you to ask yourself this: How deeply do you care about your family? How deeply do you love your spouse? And how tenaciously would you fight for them if they were ever in danger or in harm’s way? That is how deeply you should care, and that is how tenaciously you should fight, for the very same things for my life, because they matter just as much to me. Gay people should be a treasured part of our families and our communities, and the truly Christian response to them is acceptance, support, and love.
An important historical record of a traumatic period in India’s recent political history, PRISONERS OF CONSCIENCE by Anand Patwardhan focuses on the State of Emergency imposed by Indira Gandhi from June 1975 to March 1977. During the Emergency the media was muzzled, over 100,000 people were arrested without charge and imprisoned without trial. But political prisoners existed before the Emergency, and they continue to exist even after it is over.
In 2018, the musical North, West, East and South of Shillong have all combined to give us this very talented group of young musicians whose EP ‘Tempted’ is out now in all the world’s digital stores. They call themselves Blue Temptation and comprise, at some point or the other, Gregory Ford Nongrum, his elder brother El Nathan Ford Nongrum, Shepherd Najiar, Manavon Massar and Vincent Tariang (also of Soulmate). These five young men encapsulate Shillong’s old histories and musical geographies but, as they should, also burn them to the ground. Greg, El Nathan and Shepherd (Shep) are from ‘the West’ but they barely remember the Highway Band anymore and their journey into the blues was as simple and complex as the music itself. Manavon is a keyboard player/sound system blaster/DJ from the ‘Roots Region’ and his dreadlocks and patois, are therefore quite historically grounded. Vincent too is a direct descendant of the ‘Roots Region’ and I’m sure, his father Rudy Wallang must’ve played a small part in his love for the blues.
#Aretha #Songs
“Aretha Franklin may have died today aged 76 but the music of “Lady Soul” will long be celebrated.”
Luz Almanza, Jaime Peña and Rocio Campos have more in common than living around the same football field, the site of one of Colombia’s most horrific massacres. On 16 May 1998, all three lost a family member. Their organizing in search of the disappeared and defiance of state impunity is what binds them.
This song is dedicated to the families and friends of all the individuals who were killed in the alleged extra judicial executions in Manipur.
By this time, most of you would have heard of Modi’s huge blunder in China where he misspelled “STRENGTH” as “STREANH” and became a laughingstock.
Now, let me make myself clear on one thing: I don’t expect Modi to know good English. So I do not judge him poorly for his poor mastery of English.
I would have been perfectly happy if Modi gave a speech to the Chinese in languages he is comfortable with – Hindi or Gujarati.
But given that he chose to speak in English despite having the option, he bears the responsibility for the goof-up.
It is a violently subversive darkly comic take on police brutality, white supremacy, and US machismo – and Childish Gambino’s music video, This is America, has been released to critical acclaim, 133,000,000 YouTube hits (and counting), and minimal backlash.
[su_highlight background=”#9ff6aa”]Dr. Mohmmad Rafi Bhat is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Kashmir. He has been working in the Department for the…
Is Karl Marx’s critique of capitalism still relevant to the 21st century? Can we ever read him independently of the movements that violently seized state power in his name, claiming to represent the workers through the sole will of the Party? 3 animated films to guide you through the Marxist muck
Gillo Pontecorvo (1919–2006), whose masterpiece “The Battle of Algiers” (1966) remains the most perfect example of a ‘reconstructed realism’, the purest cinematic equivalent of Marx’s famous metaphor of the ‘life of the subject-matter’ being ‘ideally reflected as in a mirror’. What Pontecorvo set out to do was, in his words, ‘represent the irreversibility of a revolutionary process when a colonized people acquire consciousness of its identity as a nation’. And he did this so well that the film was boycotted by the French delegation at the Venice Film Festival in 1966 and banned for over three years in both France and England (till 1971).”
Such videos which claim to address the issue of ‘women’s safety’ post the 16th December 2012 rape are fantastic in their myopia, and deeply offensive, and need to be challenged. In this video, the juxtaposition of the narratives of primarily upper class and upper caste women with random shots of working class men in public spaces, is unacceptable, and adds to reinforcing the construct of working-class men as the only and markedly, perpetrators of sexual violence. It is horrible how in this video, the narrative of privileged women’s experiences that include never daring “to take public transport at night” or talking about “backward mentality” and “patriarchy” are repeatedly counter-posed with random visuals of working-class men going about their daily lives, whether in the sabzi mandi or waiting for passengers in their e-rickshaws or travelling in the back of a truck together.
After receiving the recent accolade of “Festival capital of Europe” – Meghalaya gets its first participatory festival of BAD ROADS.
Lada phi dei i nongtrei-nongbylla ha jylla Meghalaya, peit ia kane ka video. kan batai shai ia ki hok jong phi ha ki kam sorkar, lane ha ki kam riewshimet (private) bad ter ter. Ngi lah ban ioh ki hok lada ngi ieng tylli lang kawei. Peit bad pynsaphriang ia kane sha baroh ki nongbylla ba shah pynduh ia ki hok jong ki.
Gauri Lankesh was one of the Karnataka’s most prominent and fearless journalist. She was shot dead outside her house in Bengaluru on the night of 5th September, 2017. Gauri spoke out against communal forces in the Country and represented dissent and freedom of speech. The film is more than a personal tribute and follows her political journey, envisaging what she stood for and her struggle for communal harmony until her last breath. And her life story has become the history of Karnataka’s fight against right-wing communal forces.
Tonight Gurmeet Ram Rahim from his prison cell calls upon you to dance and purify yourself to his tunes and join his followers in the new world they are creating. So get charged you sons of lion.
The Information and Broadcasting Ministry’s act of denying exemption of censor for three films selected for the 10th International Documentary and Short Film Festival of Kerala has invited strong reactions from various corners. The festival, one of its kind in the country, is an avenue for documentary filmmakers to get a wide audience for their films. It is particularly an important platform for independent filmmakers. What is common to these three films—In the Shade of Fallen Chinar, Directed by Fazil N.C. and Shawn Sebastian; The Unbearable Being of Lightness, directed by P.N. Ramachandra; and March March March, directed by Kathu Lukose—is that they deal with issues related to contemporary politics.
The conviction of Prof. G.N. Saibaba by the Gadchiroli District Court on 7th March 2017 has revived questions around the UAPA, and how it has progressively eroded Article 19 of the Indian Constitution. This 8 minute illustrated video by the Media Collective documents the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act in its 50th year, its contemporary application and raises questions about its constitutional validity.
“Rainbow In A Brown World” is an entertaining, an educative and an animated film that depicts a day-in-the-life of a queer Indian woman as she goes about her daily routine and encounters various people who question her regarding her sexuality. The protagonist ‘Aarti’ is a young, queer woman who finds herself at the receiving end of an absurd, often hilarious albeit well intentioned questions about being LGBT. However, she answers these wittily and is often amused by them.
The Bravery were never a very big band. The reason I heard of them was mainly because they were supposed to have been the chief rivals of The Killers. Those were the years when every band in the world had to have the word “the” somewhere in their name. One day we shall have to explain that phenomenon to our kids.
An electric box started sparking and exploded just now near Bethany, Laitumkhrah. Caught the whole shit on camera.
Raioteers, once a week we deserve to unwind after the crappy craziness of Indian politics and the gradual obliteration of our senses and so we thought we would introduce a Raiot Jukebox to nudge out the noise with soothing (and sometimes not so soothing) music. If you have a jukebox to share do send us your playlist.
The shit-storm on the internet has started. Ultimately it boils down to it just being a fun change that lyrics you’ve grown up humming are making a reappearance as high literature. It’s all light years from the genesis of Dylan anyhow, and he couldn’t be too easily pigeon-holed into anything too water-tight.
One or Two Things About Rakesh Tikait
While many raise apprehensions about Rakesh Tikait even now, and perhaps rightly so, I also appeal to the same set to be patient in the way they approach this situation. It’s a difficult time, and such churnings are crucial. The damage that BJP has done to India will take very long to amend. Sometimes even fraught with contradictions. Impulsive reactions won’t help anyone.
Many fault lines still exist in West UP. Unlike Punjab where militant Farmers Unions have been active for many decades, Haryana and even West UP (including BKU) rely on Khaps to mobilize farmers. Feudal attitudes will take time to break down. But the Mahapanchayat on the 29th was a sure, small but significant, step towards the democratization of that society.
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