Film Screenings
27 Down
Bangalore Film Forum and Ashish Rajadhyaksha
This weekend, travel back to the seventies and enjoy Awtar Krishna Kaul’s 27 Down, a 1974 drama based on the Hindi novel Athara Sooraj Ke Paudhe. The film is centred around Sanjay, a railway employee who is battling between his duty towards his authoritarian father and his desire for freedom. 27 Down is popular for its unique cinematography, themes of societal expectations, pursuit of dreams and self-discovery.
This film screening is the second in our six-month long series, ‘The Radical Seventies’, a collaboration between MAP and Bangalore Film Forum, co-curated by Ashish Rajadhyaksha.
This series has been conceptualised as part of MAP’s youth engagement programming.
The Radical Seventies is a series that is specially crafted for youth to engage with older classics that resonate with our contemporary times, in familiar and unexpected ways. Through the 1970s, Indian cinema saw several major experiments in cinema — often made in direct conversation with radical politics. The decade began in the late 1960s and spilled over into the early 1980s. With 27 Down, we embark on another chapter of this journey, exploring questions around evolving identities, migration, and the push and pull between independence, empowering anonymity and the loneliness of the urban experience.
Bookings
Basav Biradar
Basav Biradar is a writer, critic and a non-fiction filmmaker. He teaches film at Srishti Manipal Institute of Art, Design and Technology. He also is the founder of a history collective called Historywallahs.
Ashish Rajadhyaksha
Ashish Rajadhyaksha is a film historian, and an occasional art curator. He is the author of the Encyclopaedia of Indian Cinema (with Paul Willemen, 1994/1999), Indian Cinema from the Time of Celluolid: From Bollywood to the Emergency (2009) and John-Ghatak-Tarkovsky: Citizens, Filmmakers, Hackers (2023).
Bangalore Film Forum
Bangalore Film Forum was founded with the vision to celebrate cinema as an essential art form and foster a thriving film culture, their mission is deeply rooted in the belief that film has the power not only to entertain and move people but also to change cultures. Their commitment lies in researching, curating, organising, and presenting films that respond to the needs of the time and bring the community together around great films.
Engaging discourse forms the cornerstone of their approach, as post-screening discussions are designed to foster critical dialogue and understanding. They believe in creating a passionate community of film lovers who actively engage with the cinematic experience.
