Word: phoolan
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Rape victim. Marauder. Murderer. Superstar! Phoolan Devi, an outcast Hindu woman, became a folk hero as head of a band of outlaws preying on India's corrupt alite. Part Joan of Arc, part Ma Barker, on Feb. 14, 1981, she staged her own St. Valentine's Day massacre, leading the slaughter of 22 villagers she suspected of aiding her enemies. Yet her surrender, in 1983, was on her own terms, to the cheers of 10,000 supporters. On her release from prison last year, three political parties asked her to run for office...
...Natural Born Killers meets Heaven and Earth. Most Indian movies are either humid musical fables or languid art films in the Satyajit Ray mold. Bandit Queen is neither. It is an assaultive experience, blistering with ripe obscenities, the frontal nudity of its star and three stark scenes in which Phoolan is raped--enough to have the film banned 10 times over in a country where a bare shoulder can send the censors frothing...
Part Joan of Arc, part Ma Barker, Phoolan Devi in the early 1980's became a folk hero as head of a band of outlaws preying on India's corrupt elite. Her movie bio, saysTIME's Richard Corliss, "has an Indian heart but a Hollywood pulse; an assaultive experience, blistering with ripe obscenities, the frontal nudity of its star and three stark scenes in which Phoolan is raped --- enough to have the film banned 10 times over in a country where a bare shoulder can send the censors frothing." "Bandit Queen" was indeed banned in India, but for what director...