Lights Out

Image this: a movie is operating in theatres. Audiences are shopping for tickets, critics are writing evaluations and the projector is spinning. Then, with out warning, the lights exit. Not as a result of the movie failed. As a result of it succeeded somewhat too effectively on the one factor cinema does higher than every other artwork type, making you see one thing you weren’t purported to. It has occurred earlier than. It’s taking place now.

There’s a quiet scene in Gulzar’s ‘Aandhi’ (1975) that stays with me. The politician Aarti Devi spots her outdated caretaker in a resort foyer. Only a face from a less complicated life and on Suchitra Sen’s face, a complete inside world collapses and reassembles in seconds. It’s a deeply personal second of a lady caught between ambition and longing. It’s exactly this sort of intimacy that made the movie really feel harmful in 1975. The resemblance between Sen’s character and then-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, proper because the Emergency was being declared, was apparently too shut for consolation. ‘Aandhi’ returned to screens solely after the political climate modified. Right this moment, it’s thought of a masterwork. At the moment, it was thought of an issue.

Almost 4 many years later, Kamal Haasan’s ‘Vishwaroopam’, already licensed by the CBFC, was halted by district collectors in Tamil Nadu following protests over its portrayal of a jihadi community, with regulation and order cited as justification. The irony is value sitting with. A movie whose whole thesis was about mistaken assumptions was itself the topic of 1.

What makes the Hind Rajab case notably putting is its nakedness. A documentary carrying uncooked footage of a six-year-old Palestinian woman’s demise in Gaza throughout Israel’s 2024 Rafah offensive was rejected by the CBFC in early 2025 with out even a pretext.

Three movies. Three totally different eras. Three competing anxieties. Political, communal and diplomatic. What I discover myself returning to isn’t the very fact of censorship, however the query of framing. ‘Aandhi’ was banned when the suspension of norms was overtly declared. The ‘Vishwaroopam’ halt got here dressed within the language of public order. The ‘Hind Rajab’ rejection didn’t trouble with a authorized framework in any respect.

What modifications throughout these instances is how energy chooses to elucidate itself. The lights exit. However the projector retains spinning.

Darshim Saxena is a screenwriter and movie analyst. She is the founder and host of ‘The Second Seat’, a dialog house for creators and audiences devoted to cinema past field workplace narratives