Search results for ""Author Samir Chopra""

Samir Chopra is an immigrant, a “voluntary exile,” who discovers he can tell the story of his life through cricket, a game that has long been an influence—really, an obsession—for him. In so doing, he reveals how his changing views on the sport mirror his journey of self-discovery. In The Evolution of a Cricket Fan, Chopra is thus able to reflect on his changing perceptions of self, and of the nations and cultures that have shaped his identity, politics, displacement, and fandom. Chopra’s passion for the sport began as a child, when he rooted for Pakistan and against his native India. When he migrated, he became a fan of the Indian team that gave him a sense of home among the various cultures he encountered in North America and Australia. This “shapeshifting” exposes the rift between the Old and the New world, which Chopra acknowledges is “cricket’s greatest modern crisis.” But it also illuminates the identity dilemmas of post-colonial immigrants in the Indian diaspora.Chopra’s thoughts about the sport and its global influence are not those of a player. He provides access to the inner world of the global cricket fan navigating the world that colonial empire wrought and that cricket continues to connect and animate. He observes that the Indian cricket team carries many burdens—not only must they win cricket matches, but their style of play must generate a pride that assuages generations of wounds inflicted by history. And Chopra must navigate where he stands in that history.The Evolution of a Cricket Fan shows Chopra’s own wins and losses as his life takes new directions and his fandom changes allegiances.

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For over forty years, Shyam Benegal has been one the leading forces in Indian cinema. Informed by a rich political and philosophical sensibility and a mastery of the art and craft of filmmaking, Benegal is both of, and not of, Bollywood. As a philosophical filmmaker Benegal brings to life the existential crisis of the downtrodden Indian, the ‘subaltern’ if you will—the serf, the peasant, the woman—and imposes a distinctive philosophical vision on his cinematic reworkings of literary products. To understand Benegal’s cinema is to understand, through his lens, modern India’s continued process of political and social becoming. Focusing on the philosophical depth of Benegal's oueuvre, Samir Chopra identifies three key aspects of his work: - A trio of films which signalled to middle-class India that a revolt was brewing in India’s hinterlands - Two sets of movies which make powerful feminist statements and bring viewers into the lives of Indian women by showcasing strong, interesting female characters - Benegal the master storyteller, who possessed of a unique fabulist style in a reboot of the Indian epic Mahabharata, a Ruskin Bond novel set during the Indian Mutiny of 1857, and a Rashomon-like retelling of an Indian experimental novel, where three perspectives converge to form a unified whole

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Samir Chopra is an immigrant, a “voluntary exile,” who discovers he can tell the story of his life through cricket, a game that has long been an influence—really, an obsession—for him. In so doing, he reveals how his changing views on the sport mirror his journey of self-discovery. In The Evolution of a Cricket Fan, Chopra is thus able to reflect on his changing perceptions of self, and of the nations and cultures that have shaped his identity, politics, displacement, and fandom. Chopra’s passion for the sport began as a child, when he rooted for Pakistan and against his native India. When he migrated, he became a fan of the Indian team that gave him a sense of home among the various cultures he encountered in North America and Australia. This “shapeshifting” exposes the rift between the Old and the New world, which Chopra acknowledges is “cricket’s greatest modern crisis.” But it also illuminates the identity dilemmas of post-colonial immigrants in the Indian diaspora.Chopra’s thoughts about the sport and its global influence are not those of a player. He provides access to the inner world of the global cricket fan navigating the world that colonial empire wrought and that cricket continues to connect and animate. He observes that the Indian cricket team carries many burdens—not only must they win cricket matches, but their style of play must generate a pride that assuages generations of wounds inflicted by history. And Chopra must navigate where he stands in that history.The Evolution of a Cricket Fan shows Chopra’s own wins and losses as his life takes new directions and his fandom changes allegiances.

Read more less

For over forty years, Shyam Benegal has been one the leading forces in Indian cinema. Informed by a rich political and philosophical sensibility and a mastery of the art and craft of filmmaking, Benegal is both of, and not of, Bollywood. As a philosophical filmmaker Benegal brings to life the existential crisis of the downtrodden Indian, the ‘subaltern’ if you will—the serf, the peasant, the woman—and imposes a distinctive philosophical vision on his cinematic reworkings of literary products. To understand Benegal’s cinema is to understand, through his lens, modern India’s continued process of political and social becoming. Focusing on the philosophical depth of Benegal's oueuvre, Samir Chopra identifies three key aspects of his work: - A trio of films which signalled to middle-class India that a revolt was brewing in India’s hinterlands - Two sets of movies which make powerful feminist statements and bring viewers into the lives of Indian women by showcasing strong, interesting female characters - Benegal the master storyteller, who possessed of a unique fabulist style in a reboot of the Indian epic Mahabharata, a Ruskin Bond novel set during the Indian Mutiny of 1857, and a Rashomon-like retelling of an Indian experimental novel, where three perspectives converge to form a unified whole

Read more less