Latest news with #BSDM
Time of India
15-07-2025
- Business
- Time of India
Pact inked with two private companies to promote Madhubani painting, local arts
Patna: A memorandum of understanding (MoU) was signed by Bihar Skill Development Mission (BSDM) with two private companies to promote Madhubani painting and other local arts, during a function held on the occasion of World Youth Skills Day on Tuesday. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now State labour resources minister Santosh Kumar Singh also launched a centralised portal of the directorate of planning and training, and a QR code for skill competition registrations on the occasion, besides distributing offer letters, along with the department secretary, among the youths selected in the Mega Job Fair 2025, held from July 10-15. One Rohit Kumar Gupta of Nalanda received a job in Japan with the highest annual package of Rs 24 lakh. Minister Singh said that in this era, World Youth Skills Day has become a symbol of youth's self-reliance and identity. "Centres of Excellence, ITI institutes and Kushal Yuva Programme are proving to be milestones in this direction. There is a need to increase investment in industry-based training, agriculture and food processing sectors in Bihar. Our govt is providing training and employment opportunities with stipends to youth through 'Mukhyamantri Pratigya Yojana' and 'Prime Minister Internship Scheme'," he said. Secretary Deepak Anand stated the importance of artificial intelligence (AI) and digital skills in the modern times."Technology and AI are no longer just a specialised field but have become a part of every business, service and industry. In such a scenario, it becomes imperative that our youth are equipped not only with traditional education but also with modern, market-oriented and digital skills. Today's era is that of Industry 4.0, where traditional training has been replaced by advanced technical subjects like AI, machine learning, cloud computing, data analytics and digital marketing," he said.
Time of India
15-07-2025
- Business
- Time of India
Bihar Skill Development Mission inks pact with two private companies to promote Madhubani painting, local arts
Patna: A memorandum of understanding (MoU) was signed by Bihar Skill Development Mission (BSDM) with two private companies to promote Madhubani painting and other local arts, during a function held on the occasion of World Youth Skills Day on Tuesday. State labour resources minister Santosh Kumar Singh also launched a centralised portal of the directorate of planning and training, and a QR code for skill competition registrations on the occasion, besides distributing offer letters, along with the department secretary, among the youths selected in the Mega Job Fair 2025, held from July 10-15. One Rohit Kumar Gupta of Nalanda received a job in Japan with the highest annual package of Rs 24 lakh. Minister Singh said that in this era, World Youth Skills Day has become a symbol of youth's self-reliance and identity. "Centres of Excellence, ITI institutes and Kushal Yuva Programme are proving to be milestones in this direction. There is a need to increase investment in industry-based training, agriculture and food processing sectors in Bihar. Our govt is providing training and employment opportunities with stipends to youth through 'Mukhyamantri Pratigya Yojana' and 'Prime Minister Internship Scheme'," he said. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like 5 Books Warren Buffett Wants You to Read In 2025 Blinkist: Warren Buffett's Reading List Undo Secretary Deepak Anand stated the importance of artificial intelligence (AI) and digital skills in the modern times."Technology and AI are no longer just a specialised field but have become a part of every business, service and industry. In such a scenario, it becomes imperative that our youth are equipped not only with traditional education but also with modern, market-oriented and digital skills. Today's era is that of Industry 4.0, where traditional training has been replaced by advanced technical subjects like AI, machine learning, cloud computing, data analytics and digital marketing," he said.
Time of India
07-07-2025
- Business
- Time of India
5-day job fair
Patna: A five-day 'Mega Job Fair' will be organised by the Bihar Skill Development Mission (BSDM) under department of labour resources from July 10 to 15 at the ground of Dashrath Manjhi Labour Skill Development Centre. More than 70 companies likely to particpate in the fair to hire youths.
Los Angeles Times
12-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
‘Materialists' is a smart and funny all-star love triangle with its own commitment issues
Dakota Johnson is my favorite seductress, a femme fatale of a flavor that didn't exist until she invented it. A third-generation celebrity, she toys with interviewers who come on too strongly (especially about the 'Fifty Shades' movies, her trilogy of BSDM blockbusters), coyly enticing them to trip over their own tongues. Onscreen, she excels at playing skeptics who are privately amused by the shenanigans of attaching yourself to another person. She shrugs to conquer. Which makes Johnson the perfect avatar for a time when it's hard to commit or keep swiping right. 'Materialists,' Celine Song's follow-up to her Oscar-nominated debut 'Past Lives,' casts Johnson perfectly as an advertisement for taking the romance out of love. When her Lucy gets checked out on the street, she hands the guy a card introducing herself as a professional Manhattan matchmaker. She can peg a person's height at a glance and sum up their prospects in a pitiless snap judgment. Hearing that a friend of a friend is getting serious with a nude webcam model, she says coolly: 'He's a 5-foot-7 depressed novelist who's never been published — he couldn't do better.' Lucy likens her job to being a mortician or life insurance broker. She can reduce someone to a few simple stats: height, weight, education, parentage and bank balance. And you should hear the terrible things she says about herself. 'If anything, I have a negative dowry,' Lucy admits, insisting that she has zero intention to wed herself unless the groom is very rich. But she's also a marriage-minded mercenary who can pitch one potential client on soppy platitudes about till death do you part, and immediately pivot to assuring a bride that it's just a business deal. We're infatuated with this minx. So are two suitors from opposite sides of the tracks: Harry (Pedro Pascal), a private equity Prince Charming, and John (Chris Evans), a cash-strapped actor and cater-waiter whom Lucy already dumped for being poor. The way Song phrases their breakup is insightful: Hating his poverty makes Lucy hate herself. Meanwhile, when Harry invites Lucy up for a nightcap, she kisses him with her eyes open so she can appraise his $12-million loft. Will Lucy choose either man or neither? Once again, Song uses a love triangle plot to explore her ideas about self-actualization. 'Past Lives,' her lightly autobiographical breakthrough, tasked a writer to choose between her South Korean childhood beau and her hapless and less successful American husband — that is, to decide whether to keep chasing youthful dreams or settle for adult reality. I liked chunks of the film, but it rankled me that she framed the spouse as such a consolation-prize loser to make her heroine come off as sacrificial. Let her be selfish; it's more interesting. Here, Lucy is weighing comfort versus struggle. For good measure, Song has also saddled Evans with the worst haircut and scruff of his career. But tilt 'Materialists' at an angle and it's the same film as 'Past Lives,' only bolder and funnier. Really, Song wants to know whether a sensible girl can justify shackling herself to a broke creative. Song doesn't merely fold money into the mix. She's made it so intrinsic to her plot, for so many believable reasons, that it's also the icing and the cherry on the wedding cake. The script lets Lucy say and do all the crass things that usually belong to the rom-com villainess — the shallow snob who is supposed to lose out to a sweeter heroine — telling Harry that her favorite thing about him is how confidentially he picks up the check. (I gasped to see her walk out of a bar, tactlessly ordering him to cover the tab.) Nearly every line in the film's ferociously hilarious first hour is like Jane Austen reborn as a shock jock, until Song runs out of material and starts repeating herself. Love should be simple, 'Materialists' believes. It opens (and closes) with an ideal couple: two cave people who pledge their commitment with a fistful of daisies. Unknown millennia later, you'll spot dried daisies on Lucy's dresser, along with more exotic blossoms and puffs and powders that show how overly elaborate courtship has become. Those primitive sweethearts couldn't imagine the need for a shepherd to steer every step of their relationship. What are they, troglodytes? Well, Lucy's 21st century clients are. The requirements they foist on her are superficial and soul-crushing (and the bit players who deliver them are hilarious). New York City, with its high concentration of Wall Street finance bros, is a perfect setting to caricature people who score their dates on a spreadsheet. No wonder Lucy eventually snaps and spits out a venomous monologue straight to the camera. (The cinematographer Shabier Kirchner knows when to hold still and when to sashay around a room.) Even Lucy's favorite customer, Sophie (Zoe Winters), isn't that noble. Upon learning her last match isn't interested, she hisses, 'He's balding!' Lucy tries to mark up her clients' value to each other, next selling Sophie on a strapping 5-foot-11 bachelor while leaving out that her personal assessment of him is that he's charmless and boring. She maintains that opposites don't attract. Harry counters that she might be comparing the wrong data points. Yes, she's poor and he's rich, but they're both hustlers — one way he flirts is telling Lucy he sees potential in her intangibles. It's impossible not to be won over by the way Pascal gives Lucy a tiny smile as he kisses her knuckles. For balance, there's also a scene where Lucy and John stand so close to each other without touching that their chemistry is suffocating. A friend recently gave me a book of the first-ever newspaper advice columns from the 1690s. One questioner asked, 'Are most marriages in this age made for money?' The response was curt: 'Both in this age and in all others.' Fair enough, but in our age, it's refreshing to hear someone admit it. Which makes it a shame when Song feels compelled to slap on a happy ending that you simply don't think she believes. Two films into her career, she still writes scenes better than full scripts. For the sake of one great moment, she'll ask us to forget all the other ones it obliterates. Here, she literally follows up an argument about the impossibility of finding parking in Manhattan by cutting to a shot of the same people in the same car magically pulling up to a spot in front of Lucy's apartment. That's a silly example, but a more pointed one would give away the plot. The final stretch is so absurd that I turned into a jilted lover who kept score of every minor sin to vindicate why the film had broken my trust. I even got ticked off at the clothes Lucy packs for a trip to Iceland. Maybe on her third film, Song will tell us what she really thinks for the full running time. I respect how she writes women who fear that their hearts run too cold to ever feel truly fulfilled. As Pascal's Harry might say, her blunt and brutal parts have a special appeal. Exiting the film, I had the same surge of feeling I did after 'Past Lives.' I wanted to drag Song straight to a couple's therapist and say: I want to commit, but she cheats.
The Guardian
19-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘He threw body piercing parties and lay on a bed of nails': the wild life of body modification guru Fakir Musafar
In the opening moments of A Body to Live in, a documentary by American film-maker Angelo Madsen, we are confronted with two black-and-white photographs. Taken in 1944 by the teenage Roland Loomis, they show him stripped to his underwear, his waist heavily restricted by a leather belt, a rope wrapped several times around his neck. Loomis later renamed himself Fakir Musafar and became one of the founders of the modern primitive movement – a subculture that revolves around body modification practices including branding, suspension, contortion and binding. A Body to Live in, which premieres internationally at London's BFI Flare film festival this week, dissects Musafar's body of work, which explored the tension between masculinity and femininity, pain and pleasure, spirituality and S&M. Madsen met Musafar in 2004 through the latter's wife, the artist Cleo Dubois, whose commentary features heavily in the film. They remained close friends until Musafar's death from cancer in 2018. Dubois gave him 'free rein' to explore Musafar's vast archive, including more than 100 hours of previously unseen video and audio recordings. The film weaves together these materials with Musafar's stunning photographs and the voices of radical performance artists including Annie Sprinkle and Ron Athey. A Body to Live in follows the modern body modification movement from when it emerged as a subculture in the early 1970s, while also exploring the pushback it received and the ethical questions still raised by the phenomenon of self-inflicted pain. Some of the imagery in the film seems designed to make us think about the line that separates pleasure and self-expression from self-harm, such as videos of two-point chest suspension – the practice of dangling someone in the air by metal hooks attached to their nipples. We hear the artist narrating his early experiments in body play – such as during a weekend when he was 17 when his parents were away. Alone, he fasted for two days and restricted his waist with a chain, and clipped his body with hundreds of clothes pegs – an experience he said gave him feelings of belonging and of power. In adulthood, Musafar started throwing self-taught naked 'piercing parties', then starred in 'freakshow' performances inspired by circus acts, such as lying on beds of nails in front of audiences as weights were placed on top of him. In the 1970s, the body modification movement began to gather momentum. Musafar's core philosophy – that piercings and pain could be a way of focusing the mind and connecting with the spiritual world – inspired intense devotion from his audience. And, contrary to how people might interpret BSDM today, his take on it seemed much more inspired by care than submission and domination. We see Musafar's followers gathering together in sunny fields like hippies, where they chant, dance and pierce each other's bodies. Dubois explains that she was brought to BDSM because it was 'all about consent', which helped her to recover from being sexually assaulted. The film includes photographs of Musafar wearing makeup and women's clothes in his mother's bedroom. And many of his body modifications, such as stretching his chest and constricting his waist, feel purposefully connected to an exploration of femininity. 'He was always between genders, but he didn't call it that. He called it being in the cracks,' explains Dubois. Instead, he seemed more interested in finding a solid justification for his practices in spirituality, or through intellectualising the allure of body modification. 'Something that I found in archival interviews is that he was very insecure about how he was being perceived, and he was constantly trying to prove that he wasn't crazy,' Madsen says. 'His biggest fear was being institutionalised, because that's what they fucking did in the 1960s. If you were found cross-dressing or doing weird things with your body, you were going to be sent to a mental hospital.' To some, Musafar was an inspiration, but to many others he was an aberration. The film chronicles near-constant backlash, including political attacks in the 90s on performance artists who received federal funding. There was also anger in the Native American community, whose leaders issued a 'declaration of war' in 1993 against those who misrepresented their 'sacred traditions and practices'. Madsen says that a lot of people still have issues with Musafar's work because of the 'cultural appropriation' factor. 'Not in the sense that he had bad intentions, or was trying to harm anyone,' he explains. 'He's done all of the reading available. He's visited some of these places. He's witnessed these rituals. But he doesn't have the same access to these cultures as people who are part of them.' No matter how extreme some of the imagery – such as metal piercing bars entering almost every conceivable part of the body, often at the hands of self-taught practitioners – by the end of the film, it feels noticeably less confronting. Perhaps that is because, however niche these practices may seem, the audience starts to relate to the desire for community and acceptance, or to the experience of being drawn to something and feeling pressured to justify it. The physicality of the film also nods to the vast range of things 'regular' people do to their bodies – such as running marathons, extreme diets, intermittent fasting, or using alcohol and drugs – as ways of coping with the world. 'This film is about trying to figure out how to have relationships – on what terms, through what means, and what feels good in relation to ourselves, the world and other people,' says Madsen. 'Really, it's a film about love.' A Body to Live in is at BFI Flare festival on 20 and 21 March and Fringe! festival on 23 March, both in London
