Movies: Ismail Merchant

A British family is trapped between culture, tradition, and the colonial sins of the past....

"Roseland" is made up of three stories, sometimes connecting, all set in the famed New York dance palace, and all having the same theme: finding the right dance partner....

This short documentary, shot in July 1976 at the Mannes College of Music on Manhattan's Upper East Side, marks the first collaboration between Merchant Ivory Films and composer Richard Robbins, who would go on to provide the musical scores for nearly...

A gay young man is recruited into an illicit love triangle to watch a much older man’s sexual liaison, but ends up witnessing what turns out to be his murder. The next day the young man's opera diva mother informs him that his estranged father has be...

This lighthearted romp through Royal India presents a world of Maharajas, palaces, imperiled art objects, and the foreign collectors who will stop at nothing to possess them. Peggy Ashcroft and Larry Pine star as two rapacious art collectors who come...

Circa 1940 in Trinidad, still a British Colony, lives Ganesh Ramseyor, of East Indian origin, along with his wife, Leela. He longs to reach out to people, especially to Hindus, in order to promote the Hindu Faith, and be known as a writer. He does ge...

Two teachers vie for the right to stage a play written by Jane Austen when she was twelve years old....

In the Mumbai, India, tenement community of Pavanpul, young female courtesans sing, dance and perform sexual favors for male clientele. Directors James Ivory and Ismail Merchant blend documentary footage and dramatic reenactments in their exploration...

This 14-minute film talks about the Hindu god Brahma's creation of life, the world and of course the first woman. Saeed Jaffrey narrates the story as dancers Bhaskar, Dinu and Anjali Devi "act" out the story....

In the time frame of a single day (from dawn to dust), the film records the wanderings of an Indian youth who sleeps on the beach, holds conversations with a statue of Mahatma Gandhi, and scavenges for food with his monkey. By afternoon, a little cer...

Nirad C. Chaudhuri expounds his views on culture, history, religion and society from a comparative perspective....

Off-camera, a Western traveler tells us of hearing singing from his hotel window in Bombay. He searches for the source, and discovers a caste of street performers, eking out a modest living. We see individuals and groups, old and young, snake charmer...

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Looks at the musical extravaganzas which constitute the main bulk of commercial cinema in India; in particular at the career of Helen, the undisputed Queen of such sagas, having appeared in some five hundred since 1957. Excerpts from some of her film...