Sanghum: BANDINI (IMPRISONED)
The Royal Cinema
608 College St, Toronto, ON M6G 1B4, Canada
Ontario
43.6553504
-79.41458169999999
Sanghum Film Series presents Bimal Roy’s BANDINI / IMPRISONED
Come in for a slice of drama, romance, and murder-by-poison! BANDINI (IMPRISONED) is widely considered a feminist cult classic and one of the defining films of the Golden Age in Hindi Cinema.
The apotheosis of Roy’s social realist melodramas, BANDINI is set during the British Raj of the 1930s and tells the story of Kalyani, a young prisoner serving out a life sentence for poisoning the wife of her lover. The film is staged in a series of flashbacks, retracing the events before Kalyani’s incarceration and revealing her transformation from curious and devoted daughter, to desiring lover, and finally to a self-sacrificing outcast.
The brilliance of Roy’s BANDINI is his refusal to simplify Kalyani as either moral or immoral within the patriarchal confines of what makes a ‘good’ wife and daughter. Instead, Roy explores the complexity of a woman unabashedly in love who chooses her independence over social acceptance and the security of a ‘good’ wife and daughter-in-law.
Mark your calendars for Bimal Roy’s BANDINI, the penultimate in our series focusing on portrayals of women in Hindi Cinema!
Thanks to our community partner Pleasure Dome