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. While the distinct look of such a cinema may well have been inaugurated in Mrinal Sen’s celebrated Calcutta trilogy, similar tendencies are parallelly in evidence in other Indian cities around the same time. While the political issues were diverse - from the Naxalite movement to the great textile strike in Bombay, to political disappearances - the language was often profoundly existential: a new generation of protagonists played by young actors performing to stories that worked in tandem with literary and theatrical movements grappling with new political realities. Cinematographers, editors and sound recordists were, literally and metaphorically, taking to the streets with a vérité documentary grammar of film using portable lightweight equipment.

- Ashish Rajadhyaksha

The Radical Seventies is a six-month-long series part of a youth engagement programming for AUD/VID which is a collaboration between MAP and Bangalore Film Forum, and co-curated by Ashish Rajadhyaksha.

EXTERNAL WEBSITE: MAP_The Radical 70s