Jahnu Barua

While Northern India’s 100-year-old film industry is best known for flamboyant dance sequences and romantic plot lines, its directors have begun to step outside established formulas and explore grittier subject matter. This program surveys the world of Bollywood filmmaking, examining the personalities as well as the commercial and thematic concerns that drive central Asia’s answer to Tinseltown. Interviews with directors Karan Johar, Ashutosh Gowariker, and Yash Chopra are included, along with commentary from choreographers, musical directors, and Cinemaya Magazine editor Aruna Vasudev. The industry’s newfound attention to poverty, homelessness, and other social concerns is examined. Several film excerpts are included.

A down and out cop lands the case of a lifetime when four suspects are nabbed in the assassination attempt of a prime time journalist. The case turns out to be a devious maze where nothing is what it looks like. The pursuit of it leads him to the dark netherworld - the 'Paatal Lok', and to shocking discoveries in the past of the four suspects.