An insider's view of the Film Censor Board

Vi segnalo l'articolo An insider's view of the Film Censor Board, di Mayank Shekhar, pubblicato il 19 giugno 2012 da The New York Times. Il noto critico cinematografico racconta la sua esperienza in qualità di consulente del famigerato Central Board of Film Certification dal 2007 al 2009. L'ente preposto alla censura vaglia ogni anno 13.500 (!) pellicole, compresi trailer, corti, documentari e spot pubblicitari per il circuito cinematografico. Circa 1.200-1.300 sono lungometraggi. L'ente ha sede a Mumbai, ma opera anche in altri otto centri distaccati: New Delhi, Chennai, Kolkata, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Thiruvananthapuram, Guwahati and Cuttack.

'The chairperson, appointed by the government, is usually a known figure from arts and entertainment. (...) About 500 citizens, 150 of them in Mumbai, are entrusted with the task of certifying films during their terms, the lengths of which can vary. (...) An identity card given by the Censor Board allowed them free access into any cinema in India, so they could check and report to the police if films were being played without the suggested cuts. Some of the members claimed that they had even got theaters shut down. Many spoke at length on the declining morality of Indian films. Going through the attendance roster of those members now, I realized that a majority of them had listed “social service” as their profession. Board officials told me that it’s a euphemism for political activist. They are mostly appointed on recommendation of their local legislators or politicians. (...) Arguably the Censor Board film classifications have been more lenient toward violence than toward sexual content. (...) Over the years, the focus of the Censor Board appears to have shifted from sex and violence to people’s “hurt sentiments” - some of it possibly real, but much of it imagined. (...) I sat through another B-grade film for the Censor Board. This time it was an excessively violent flick. (...) Yawning panelists at the preview granted it an “A” [solo per adulti] certificate, without any cuts. The film’s producer walked into the screening room. “No cuts at all?” he asked. “It’s so violent, you must give cuts. (...) Come on, how will people know this film exists? I’ve made a very violent film. How will I publicize it?”.'

A conversation with urban planner Rahul Mehrotra

Riporto di seguito alcune dichiarazioni rilasciate da Rahul Mehrotra, architetto ed urbanista, nonché docente all'università di Harvard.  L'intervista è stata pubblicata da The New York Times il 17 maggio 2012:

'At the macro level what is happening is very interesting because while the intelligentsia and the élite are focusing on the seven or eight big cities, the real urban time bomb are the 392 towns that make up the larger landscape of India. These 392 towns currently contain approximately 50.000 people each and are projected to grow up to 100.000 people that in 20 years might even be a million people. So potentially between 250 and 400 million urban Indians will live in towns that are not even on radars currently. (...) I think both the architecture and urban landscape of India has to necessarily be one of pluralism because India is a multiethnic, multicultural landscape and I think architecture and cities are the physical expression of those aspirations. I don’t think we can go the China way, where everything is made in a singular image; in the mutinous democracy of India that’s going to be impossible. (...) For me personally, the two most important design moves [a Mumbai] are the sweep of Marine Drive (...) and the other thing that is really emblematic aspect of the city is Dharavi. (...) [Dharavi] it's also emblematic of the real inequities that exist in our cities and that people have to create home for themselves without having their basic needs fulfilled, and a total failure on the part of the government to provide them housing. (...) I think in Mumbai in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s with ideas for New Bombay and new metropolitan imaginations was all about evolutionary gestures. But today in Mumbai we celebrate involutionary gestures - how we fix sidewalks and upgrade slums. (...) I think the real question for us is what is the appropriate city for our society, our economy, for the kind of inequality that exists. Looking at Dubai or Shanghai or Singapore as metaphors not only undermines the fact that we’re a democracy but it also undermines the fact that the poor even exist in our cities'.

Jhumpa Lahiri: My life's sentences

Vi segnalo l'articolo My life's sentences, di Jhumpa Lahiri, pubblicato da The New York Times il 17 marzo 2012. Un estratto: 'Knowing - and learning to read in - a foreign tongue heightens and complicates my relationship to sentences. For some time now, I have been reading predominantly in Italian. I experience these novels and stories differently. I take no sentence for granted. I am more conscious of them. I work harder to know them. I pause to look something up, I puzzle over syntax I am still assimilating. Each sentence yields a twin, translated version of itself. When the filter of a second language falls away, my connection to these sentences, though more basic, feels purer, at times more intimate, than when I read in English'.