Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
There are about 250 curators in the world who keep their eyes open to choose films from around the globe for festivals. I am one of them.
I don't think women are being sidelined or ignored. If they are talented enough, they will get films. But they need to be more ambitious.
The economic freedom has come to a lot of us who are lucky, but many women are still beaten up by husbands, even when they are breadwinners.
If you are making a film for the first time, you have all the problems and fears. Yet, you have the freedom that you will never get in life.
I have been hooked to cinema since childhood. I am like a typical Indian villager who had no other source of entertainment while growing up.
I will reunite with Ananth Nag onscreen after a while for a cameo in Vijayalakshmi Singh's 'Yaanaa,' which sees her launching her daughters.
You need to understand the meaning of the dialogue to be able to convey it right. You need to know it to understand the nuances of the scene.
I took up special yoga and a diet from Sreenath Vishnu. And amazingly, I lost 5.5 kgs in 20 days and my husband Mani shed six kilos in a month.
There are few teachers from the film industry to guide newcomers. One can see a gap between the film industry and those teaching at film schools.
I'm very happy that Kathryn Bigelow has become the first woman in the 82-year history of the Oscars to earn Hollywood's top prize for filmmakers.
I was 13 or 14 when I was brought from Paramakudi to Chennai by my uncle Kamal Haasan, and I lived under the care of my uncle and my grandparents.
Mani laughs every time he hears someone ask me, 'Don't you miss acting?' Because he sees me with make-up on every morning and leaving for the studios.
In fact my first film ran for about 400 days. It all depends on hype, marketing and publicity, which are actually more expensive than the actual film.
I don't think too seriously about anything, neither does my husband and my son. When we are home, we are constantly laughing over some trivial matters.
Not many people know that I turned down my husband's first directorial, the Kannada film 'Pallavi Anupallavi,' something he still hasn't forgiven me for.
Men directors somehow think it's great to show heroes all unkempt and ungroomed. You'd be able to smell the hero's aftershave lotion if a woman directed him.
The more women grow economically, there will be more allegations against them. If they don't grow, if they are quiet, nobody is going to find fault with them.
I got a Best Actress award from the Kerala government when I was 24, and I got another one when I was 42. I was more thrilled when I got it for the second time.
Unless we get out of these mindless comedies and a good-for-nothing fellow trying to win over the heroine kind of films, Tamil cinema will not be taken seriously.
Often our onscreen personas are different from who we are. Actors like Kamal Haasan, who is such a genius, has never played a role close to what he is in real life.
We know of instances of stage plays being made into films. But I really think that all Tamil films can be staged; I'd like to take up K. Balachander's films and do that.
Though the first day of college was scary, I gradually adjusted to the environment and started enjoying myself with friends, lecturers, sports, and college day functions.
The stories are being written by men, and it's men who are directing it. As long as that continues, you won't be seeing much change in the way women are portrayed in cinema.
I have seen a lot of people who are affected by HIV. When I see that there is industrial growth on one side but there is not awareness on the other side, it breaks my heart.
I have been acting for more than 25 years and have worked in all the four Southern languages. But it is in the Kannada films that I got huge recognition and variety of roles.
In Chennai, I do film reviews for a local channel. Every second movie I review is by a debutant. There is so much passion and freshness in those films; that makes them special.
The Indian film industry has a condescending attitude towards its fans without actually intending to. They want to explain everything, leaving very little to the filmgoers' imagination.
'Hasini Pesum Padam' was about reviewing Tamil movies that released every week. I felt it is more of an international platform and hence used trendy trousers and different kinds of tops.
I don't believe in God, in prayer, in going to temples begging God to give me and my family happiness. I am not asking everyone to be an atheist, but good thoughts are not spent in a temple.
In a film festival, people come to watch because they are interested in cinema. It's not like watching a premiere show or being in any cinema hall, where you are not with like-minded people.
When my son Nandan was in middle school, I had a fun way of doing his maths homework. I bought another set of mathematics books and both of us would sit side by side and start solving problems.
I was born in a part of Tamil Nadu notorious for eliminating the girl child. I was the third daughter born to my parents and I have my mother to thank for deciding that I was not an unwanted child.
On the first day of my shoot for 'School Master,' I was feeling a little uneasy because I had to travel a lot. I was feeling a little sleepy too. After the completion of each shot, I would go for a small nap.
Raja Ravi Varma was one of the few Indians who not only understood women but also represented them exquisitely in a single dimension within four frames, infusing each painting with life through the use of color.
Throughout school I studied in Tamil medium schools but it was only when I got to college that I realized that not learning English was a great disadvantage as I didn't understand even the simplest of sentences.
In 1983, when I did 'Sindhu Bhairavi' and played the other woman, many men came up to me and said it opened up a lot to them. The film showed that a man and woman could have an intellectual and artistic relationship.
In Queen Mary's, which was an all-girls' college, I learned discipline, hard work and to be competitive. But at Madras Film Institute, I learned about the world, being free and knowledgeable, and thinking beyond oneself.
I think as film actors we are comfortable on stage because we know what the audience expects. The only tricky part is to remember the lines and that body language is key, which is something we tend to forget after years of acting in front of a camera.
For people to understand, you can't speak 'cinema.' Cinema doesn't have alphabets, so you have to go to the local language. Even in England, if they make a movie in London they have to make it in the Cockney accent, they can't make a film with the English spoken in the BBC. So cinema has to be realistic to the area that it is set in.