BROADCASTS.com

From the early \u201970s onwards, Indian cinematographer Navroze Contractor\u2014who passed away last year at age 80\u2014blazed a trail of radical image-making. Trained in fine arts, photography, and cinematography, Contractor wielded the camera as a weapon and a paintbrush, capturing both the thrills and the throes of popular uprisings in films that defined political documentary in India, and giving stunning form to the bold adventures in fiction undertaken by India\u2019s Parallel Cinema filmmakers. \n\nLast Monday, Film Comment presented a double-feature program of two films shot by the cinematographer\u2014Mani Kaul\u2019s rapturous Duvidha (1973), and Sanjiv Shah\u2019s unique musical satire Love in the Time of Malaria (1992)\u2014along with an extended conversation with Deepa Dhanraj, Contractor\u2019s partner in life and work, with whom he founded the feminist Yugantar Film Collective in the 1980s. \n\nThe talk, available today on the podcast, delves into the challenging and low-budget conditions that Duvidha was shot under, the influence of Indian miniature painting and still photography on its look, and Contractor\u2019s extraordinary visual felicity with both documentary and fiction.