Western audiences have mainly experienced Indian cinema through what is known

popularly as Bollywood. Films structured round song and dance, and full of extravagant
action and melodrama. Thus, while popular Indian films follow different narrative and
stylistic conventions, they do share the star and genre centred approach of western
mainstream film.

Since the mid-1970s, India has led the world in annual film production. Although slightly
decreased in recent years, the total number of domestic feature films made in 1997 still
reached 697. Besides the quantity, Indian cinema is also marked by its great diversity in
language and culture. While there are as many as 16 official languages, the majority of
films are in Telugu, Hindi, Tamil, and Malayalam.

A rather different film experience, usually screened in ‘art film’ venues is the ‘New
Indian Cinema’. A movement inspired by Italian neo-realism and at odds with orthodox
Indian Cinema emerged in the films of Satyajit Ray, Ritwik Ghatak and Mrinal Sen.
Satyajit Ray is well-known in the west as a classic director and as an auteur*, [a
filmmaker offering a distinctive style and themes]. However, he is not especially thought
of as a political filmmaker and indeed he made caustic comments regarding younger
filmmakers who were. However, he established the possibility of filming outside the
commercial centres of mainstream film.

His fellow Bengali Ritwik Ghatak also scripted and directed films in the same period. He
has not achieved the international reputation of Ray. But his political and educational
work in film has had an important influence on subsequent film-makers.

In the 1960s younger directors like Mrinal Sen tackled explicitly political subjects and
developed new and unconventional forms for such films. During this period such film
production was partly dependent on state funding, including work commissioned or
screened by the State Television network Doordarshan. There was also a predominantly
urban network of independent exhibitors screening both foreign art films and
independently made Indian films. Since the 1980s both these sectors have suffered under
the impact of commercial satellite broadcasting. This has reduced the opportunities for
independent film. There is a growth in international co-productions, but these tend to be
for the international art film market

Parallel cinema

NEW INDIAN CINEMA

At the start of the 1950s, Calcutta became a centre of art cinema with the emergence of
the film society movement. Satyajit Ray’s Panther Panchali/Song of the Road, produced
with West Bengal state government support in 1955, was an example of a new type of
Indian film. Post-independence, despite a relatively sympathetic government enquiry in
1951, the commercial industry was the object of considerable moral scrutiny and
criticism, and was subject to severe taxation. A covert consensus emerged between
proponents of art cinema and the state, all focusing on the imperative to create a “better”
cinema. The Film and Television Institution of India was established at Pune in 1960 to
develop technical skills for an industry seen to be lacking in this field. However, active
support for parallel cinema, as it came to be called, only really took off at the end of the
1960s, under the aegis of the government’s Film Finance Corporation, set up to support
new film-makers.

Ironically, this pressure and vocal criticism occurred at a time when arguably some of the
most interesting work in popular cinema was being produced. Radical cultural
organisations, loosely associated with the Indian Communist Party, had organised
themselves as the All India Progressive Writers Association and the Indian Peoples’
Theatre Association (IPTA). The latter had produced 'Dharti ke Lal' / 'Sons of the Soil'
[KA Abbas; 1943], and its impact on the industry can be seen in the work of radical
directors such as Bimal Roy and Zia Sarhady.
In the 1950s the influence from Europe on Indian cinema was noticeable. The First
International Film Festival, held in Bombay in 1951, showed Italian works for the first
time in India. The influence of neo-realism can be seen in films such as 'Do Bigha Zamin'
/ 'Two Measures of Land' (Bimal Roy; 1953), a portrait of father and son eking out a
living in Calcutta that strongly echoes the narrative of Vittorio de Sica’s 'Bicycle Thieves'
[Italy, 1948].

India’s emergent art cinema, led by the Bengali directors Satyajit Ray, Ritwik Ghatak and
Mrinal Sen reacted against studio spectacles. Satyajit Ray’s world-famous debut, 'Panther
Panchali', is based on many of the themes that engaged contemporary popular film-
makers of the time, such as loss of social status, economic injustices, uprootment, but sets
them within a naturalistic, realist frame which put a special value on the Bengali
countryside.

In contrast to Ray, his contemporaries Mrinal Sen and Ritwik Ghatak set out to expose
the dark underside. of India’s lower middle-class and unemployed. Sen, after a phase of
didactic political cinema at the height of the Maoist-inspired Naxalite movement of the
early 1970s - marked by the trilogy 'Interview' (1971), 'Calcutta 71' (1972), and 'Padatik' /
'The Guerrilla Fighter' (1973) - made two films, 'Akaler Sandhane' / 'Search of Famine'
[1980] and 'Khandar' / 'Ruins' [1983], about film-making itself, exploring its inherent
distance and disengagement.

Perhaps the most outstanding figure of this generation, fulfilling the potential of the
radical cultural initiatives of the IPTA, was Ritwik Ghatak. Disruption, the problems of
locating oneself in a new environment, and the problems entailed in trying to record
“reality”, and the indignities and oppression of common people are the recurrent themes
of this poet of Partition, who lamented the division of Bengal in 1947. Disharmony and
discontinuity could be said to be the hallmark of 'Nagarik' / 'Citizen' [1952] and 'Meghe
Dhaka Tara' / 'Cloud-capped Star' [1960], where studio sets of street corners mingle
uneasily with live-action shots of Calcutta. There is something deliberately jarring about
the rhythms of editing, the use of sound, and the compositions, as if the director refuses
to allow us to settle into a comfortable, familiar frame of viewing. In 'Ajantrik' / 'Man and
Machine' [1958] and 'Subarnarekha' [1952, released 1965] he juxtaposes the displaced
and transient urban figure with tribes peoples; placing the human figure at the edge of the
frame, dwarfed by majestic nature.

The 1970s were a productive period for such a radical cinema. However, in the 1980s the
support from the State NFDC and the acess to audiences on State Television came under
pressure. Whilst there had been state aid for production there was no national distribution
and exhibition network for alternative film. Because of arguments about profitability and
subsidy the focus shifted to funding Festivals and Awards. As Satellite television
expanded it challenged the long-running State monopoly in Television. One result from
such changes has been the gradual reduction of screenings for Parallel films, once a
Sunday afternoon staple.

Contemporary Indian cinema

Bollywood has more than held its own in the domestic Indian market in recent years. But
parallel cinema has suffered a decline. There is a vibrant independent cinema, with many
films arising from regional cinemas. Only a limited amount is exhibited in the west, and
films with western finance usually get preference. An example of where that exercise can
lead would be 'Bandit Queen' [UK/India 1994]. Made by Film Four it dramatised the
story of Phoolan Devi, a lower-caste woman who suffered multiple rapes but surmounted
this to become leader of a bandit gang. Arundhati Roy, a writer [now also known for
political campaigns in India] published an article titled 'The Great Indian Rape-Trick',
which castigated the film. She quite rightly argued that the film was longer on
exploitation than it was on politics.

A similar problem can be identified in the work of Mira Nair. Her 1988 'Salaam Bombay'
had definite political limitations, but it did focus primarily on the poor and exploited
street children of Bombay. Her recent art house hit, 'Monsoon Wedding' [2002], focuses
almost entirely on the affluent middle classes. The film, with its audience, only fleetingly
visits the slums where the majority live.

At least one film has addressed the relations between the imperial west and India in a
political light. This is 'Body' [2001] scripted and directed by Govind Nihalani. He has a
long track record in Parallel Cinema. He worked first as a cinematographer for Shyam
Benegal before he took up direction. The film explores the impact of becoming an organ-
donor on a family breadwinner. The film loosely falls into a science fiction genre,
offering a dystopia set in Indian slums. Nihalani commented "The essential issue
explored in the film is ...where technologically advanced societies / nations dominate the
economy and politics of the developing societies / nations?..."

Nihalani's earlier maestro, Shyam Benegal has continued to make films. However, a
recent film seen in Britain seemed far less politically conscious than earlier films.
'Zubeidaa' [2001] recounts the life of an actual 1930s cinema heroine who gave up her
career to marry a Maharajah. This instantly reminds one of Benegal's earlier film,
'Bhumika' ['The Role', 197]. However, that film included a trenchant view of both
commercial cinema and of the way women are exploited in such an industry. 'Zubeidaa',
by contrast, seems much more like a romantic fairy tale.