I recently saw an exhibition of a feminist painter who lives and works in London. Though none of the paintings on display could be termed as ‘great art’, yet some of the visuals exploded in your face. The quality of intensity was not that of a musical concert or of a moving ballerina. In fact, it was quite different. These works were desperate shouts for help! So desperate, the voices cracked. The visual noise in the room was a cacophony of screams.

Like that exhibition, the film Parzania also challenges the parameters of art.

We treat classical art as the product of a simpler civilisation, when things were settled and people believed in a common philosophy of life. But the historians dismay you by pointing out several contradictory movements in directions opposite to the general trends. The truth is that the human mind sometimes oversimplifies and conveniently assumes that any one age presents a homogeneous pattern.

More than others, ours is the age of transition. It displays a bewilderingly stratified picture. The sudden influx of information technologies and the explosion of electronic media in a developing society that still holds on to medieval beliefs and is overlaid by 18th century rationalism, causes upheavals. Volcanic eruptions of pre-historic fanaticism are one of the ugliest features of the age we live in.

It is only natural that artistic expressions in such an age are extremely varied and highly individualistic. The well defined borders between art and propaganda are blown away. Street theatre, fictionalised documentary films, direct slogans with art images are only a few examples of this phenomenon.

... contd.