Bollywood designer found dead

London, Feb 12: Oscar-winning British director Steve McQueen is returning to his art roots with a series of short films at London's Tate Modern art gallery, offering a sensory exploration of black identity.

McQueen, who became the first black director to win the best picture Academy Award in 2014 for "12 Years a Slave", is now based between London and Amsterdam and is focused on championing diversity in the film industry.

Visitors to his new exhibition will be greeted by "Static", a film of New York's Statue of Liberty, scrutinising the iconic symbol from every possible angle at very close range against a deafening backdrop of the helicopter from where the footage was filmed.

"What interests Steve is our view of the world, how humans are trying to represent Liberty," said Fiontan Moran, assistant curator of the exhibition.

"7th Nov, 2001" features a still shot of a body while McQueen's cousin Marcus tells of how he accidentally killed his brother, a particularly traumatic experience for the artist.

"Western Deep" is another visceral work, giving a sense through sights and sounds in an interactive installation of the experiences of miners in South Africa, following them to the bottom of the mine.

"Ashes", meanwhile, is a tribute to a young fisherman from Grenada, the island where McQueen's family originated.

The images of beauty and sweetness filmed from his boat are tragically reversed on the other side of the projection screen, which shows a grave commissioned by McQueen for the eponymous young fisherman, who was killed by drug traffickers.

African-American singer, actor and civil rights activist Paul Robeson (1898-1976) is honoured in "End Credits".

The film shows censored FBI documents detailing the agency's surveillance of Robeson, read by a voice-over artist, for five hours.

"He is... testing the limits of how people can be documented in an era of mass surveillance," said Moran.

In a similarly militant vein, the exhibition features the sculpture "Weight", which was first shown in the prison cell where the writer and playwright Oscar Wilde was imprisoned.

It depicts a golden mosquito net draped over a metal prison bed frame, addressing the theme of confinement and the power of the imagination to break free.

The show runs alongside an exhibition of McQueen's giant portraits of London school classes, many of which appeared on the streets of London last year.

"I remember my first school trip to Tate when I was an impressionable eight-year-old, which was really the moment I gained an understanding that anything is possible," said McQueen, adding it was "where in some ways my journey as an artist first began".

He recently told the Financial Times newspaper the difference between his art films and his feature films was that the former were poetry, the latter like a novel.

"Poetry is condensed, precise, fragmented," he said. "The novel is the yarn".

The exhibition opens on February 13 and runs until May 11.

Chennai, Feb 10: The Income Tax Department on Monday summoned Tamil actor Vijay over charges of tax evasion and his alleged links with financier Anbu Chezhiyan.

The development comes after the IT Department on Friday carried out a raid at the actor's residence in Panaiyur area in Chennai.

IT sleuths held searches in connection with the success of a recent film which was a Box Office hit, collecting around Rs 300 crore.

As per sources, the IT Department on Thursday recovered Rs 65 crores from the residence of Vijay's alleged financer in Chennai during raids which were carried out in the connection with the tax evasion case linked to AGS Cinemas.

Mumbai, Jun 17: A lawyer on Wednesday moved a criminal complaint against 8 persons, including Bollywood superstar Salman Khan and producer-director Karan Johar, in a local court regarding the death of Bollywood actor Sushant Singh Rajput.

The court had fixed July 3 as the next date of hearing.

In his complaint filed in the court of Chief Judicial Magistrate, advocate Sudhir Kumar Ojha alleged that these eight persons forced Sushant to commit suicide under a conspiracy which, he pleaded, amounted to murder.

Others named in the complaint are Aditya Chopra, Sajid Nadiadwala, Sanjay Leela Bhansali, Bhushan Kumar, Ekta Kapoor, and director Dinesh.

The complainant claimed that these persons did not let Sushant's movies get released under a conspiracy and the late actor was not even invited to film functions because of these people.

Ojha said that Sushant Singh Rajput's death had not only hurt the people of Bihar but the entire country.

He said the complaint had been filed under Sections 306, 109, 504 and 506 and Bollywood actor Kangana Ranawat had been listed as a witness in the case.

Sushant Singh Rajput had allegedly committed suicide at his Bandra flat in Mumbai on Sunday.