Kasba English The Town is a 1991 Indian drama film written and directed by Kumar Shahani. It is based on the short story In the Ravine by the famous Russian playwright Anton Chekov. The movie is an import work in the Indian Parallel Cinema movement which started in the early 1970s. It is one of the last films to be part of the movement as it died out by the early 1990s.
Kasba is the third of Kumar Shahanis films to win the Filmfare Award for Best Film Critics after Maya Darpan and Khayal Gatha.Kasba is described as being slow and uncharacteristically melodramatic for a Shahani film, but it has gotten acclaim from majority of critics. The film blog Ellipsis gave a positive review of the film saying, One of the most impressive aesthetic elements of Kasba is the positioning of the camera, moving only to parallel the psychological and emotional mood of the characters, whilst windows and doorways are used repeatedly throughout to frame the actions of characters so that the exterior landscapes merge seamlessly with the interiors creating a feeling of social inertia and even rural decadence. At times, Shahanis emphasis on the rituals and traditions tied up in the history of the family recalls a philosophical approach characteristic of anthropologists. ........
Source: Wikipedia