Cinema of India

From Open Encyclopedia

Image:Delhicinema (92).JPG India is a major regional center for cinema. The Indian film industry is the largest in the world (1200 movies released in the year 2002). The industry is supported mainly by a vast film-going Indian public, though Indian films have been gaining increasing popularity in the rest of the world — notably in countries with large numbers of expatriate Indians.

1 Regional film industries
2 Genre conventions of commercial films
3 Indian art cinema
4 Indian cinema meets Hollywood
5 National film award
6 Facts on Indian cinema
7 See also
8 References
9 External links

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Regional film industries

India is a large country where many languages are spoken. Each of the larger languages supports its own film industry: Urdu/Hindi, Bengali, Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam.

The Hindi/Urdu film industry, based in Mumbai, formerly Bombay, is called Bollywood (a melding of Hollywood and Bombay).
The Tamil film industry is based in the Kodambakkam area of Chennai, South India, hence is sometimes called Kollywood.
Tollygunge is a metonym for the Bengali film industry, long centered in the Tollygunge district of Kolkata. The Bengali language industry is notable as having nurtured the director Satyajit Ray, an internationally renowned filmmaker and a winner of many awards, among them the Bharat Ratna (India's highest civilian award), the Legion d'honneur (France), and the Lifetime achievement Academy Award.
Some people call the Kannada (Karnataka State) film industry (Sandalwood), as Karnataka is known for sandalwood. This term does not seem to be in widespread use.
Some people call the Telugu film industry (Tollywood).

The Bollywood industry is usually the largest in terms of films produced and box office receipts. Many workers in other regional industries, once established, also work in other film industries, nationally as well as internationally, owing to their talent, popularity and success. For example, A.R. Rahman, one of the best known film music composers in Indian cinema, started his career in Tamil cinema in Chennai but has since undertaken ventures in other spheres, including working in international film and theatre industries. Similarly, films that succeed in one language are often remade or dubbed in others. Films like Padosan and Roja, for example, were re-made/dubbed from their original Bengali and Tamil versions respectively, into Hindi.

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Genre conventions of commercial films

Commercial films, in whatever regional center they are made, tend to be:

Long — three hours, with an intermission.

Musical — action is periodically interrupted by song-and-dance routines. Good movies use the routines to move the story forward; mediocre movies have them only because the audience demands them. Songs are sung by professional play-back singers and lip-synched by dancing actors and actresses.

Melodramatic, sentimental, of mixed genre — they mix romance, comedy, action, suspense, etc.

Sometimes Indian-styled remakes of popular Hollywood movies, thus continuing a long film-making tradition (global in scope) of imitations and creative remixes.

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Indian art cinema

In addition to commercial cinema, there is also high-minded Indian art cinema, known to film critics as "New Indian Cinema" or sometimes "the Indian New Wave" (see the Encyclopedia of Indian Cinema). Most people in India simply call such films "art films" as opposed to mainstream commercial cinema. From the 1960s through the 1980s, the art film was usually government-supported cinema. Aspiring directors could get federal or state government grants to produce non-commercial films on Indian themes. Many of these directors were graduates of the government film school (FTII or Film and Television Institute of India). Their films were showcased at government film festivals and on the government-run TV station, Doordarshan. These films also had limited runs in art house theatres in India and overseas.

The art directors owed much more to foreign influences, such as Italian Neo-Realism or French New Wave, than they did to the genre conventions of commercial Indian cinema. The best known New Cinema directors were Bengali: Satyajit Ray, Ritwik Ghatak, and Bimal Roy. The best known films of this genre include the Apu Trilogy (Bengali) by Ray, Meghe Dhaka Tara (Bengali) by Ghatak and Do Bigha Zameen (Hindi) by Roy.

Satyajit Ray was the most successful of the "art" directors. Many Indians knew his name and took pride in his numerous foreign awards. Prestige, however, did not translate to large-scale commercial success. His films played primarily to art-house audiences (students and intelligentsia) in the larger Indian cities, or to film buffs on the international art-house circuit.

However, many cinematographers, technicians and actors started in art cinema and moved to commercial cinema. The actor Naseeruddin Shah is one notable example. He has never achieved matinee idol status, but he has turned out a solid body of work as a supporting actor and a star in independent films such as Mira Nair's Monsoon Wedding.

Art cinema was also well-supported in the state of Kerala. Malayalam movie makers like Adoor Gopalakrishnan, G. Aravindan, T. V. Chandran, and M. T. Vasudevan Nair were fairly successful. Starting the 1970s, Kannada film-makers from Karnataka state produced a string of serious, low-budget films. But virtually only one director from that period continues to make off-beat films -- Girish Kasaravalli.

In the film markets of South India, particularly the Tamil film industry, directors such as K. Balachander, Bharathiraja, Balu Mahendra, Bapu, Puttanna, Siddalingaiah, Dr.K.Vishwanath, and Mani Ratnam have achieved box-office hits whilst balancing elements of art and popular cinema. Films from the South that balance art and commercial styles, that went on to receive acclaim nationally and internationally include "Nayagan" and "Kannathil Muthamittal".

Independent films may be the future of art cinema in India, which has to a great extent lost its government patronage. The Indian film market will likely consist of big-budget mass-market films with big stars, and independent films made on a shoestring by aspiring auteurs -- much like today's Western film market.

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Indian cinema meets Hollywood

On the one hand, Indian cinema is becoming increasingly Westernized. This trend is strongest in Bollywood, which is importing Western actors (such as Rachel Shelley in Lagaan), racing to meet Western production standards, filming overseas, and incorporating more and more English in movie dialogues. Bollywood is also making hit films (like Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge and Kal Ho Na Ho) that deal with the overseas Indian experience.

(It should be noted that Indian cinema has always been Westernized in the sense that it has often plagiarized or "recycled" storylines, individual scenes, even music from Western movies and musicians. In most cases, no credit is given. This is a very contentious issue. Some observers see plagiarism everywhere and sneer at Indian cinema for its lack of integrity. Other observers say that many instances of supposed plagiarism are just opportunistic re-uses of popular themes (as is often done in Hollywood itself) and that the number of changes required to make the plots and music conform to Indian tastes remove these "homages" from the category of plagiarism.)

On the other hand, Western cinema is increasily interested in India. As Western audiences for Indian cinema grow, Western producers are anxious to take their cut of the profits and the audience.

They are funding maverick Indian film-makers like Gurinder Chadha (Bride and Prejudice) and Mira Nair (Vanity Fair). Both Chadha and Nair made their names in Western indie films; they've been tapped to "interpret" the Indian cinematic tradition for Westerners.

Indian cinema is also influencing the English and American musical; A.R. Rahman, India's star filmi composer, was recruited for Andrew Lloyd Webber's Bombay Dreams, and a musical version of Hum Aapke Hain Koun played in London's West End.

Some Indians have succeeded in the Western film industry purely on their own terms -- like the director Manoj Night Shyamalan. Indian actors like Aishwarya Rai are getting good roles.

Hollywood is also adopting some of the conventions of Indian cinema in otherwise Western-style films. The Guru features a number of Indian-style song-and-dance sequences. The 2005 hit movie The 40-Year-Old Virgin not only features Indian actors, it ends with a song-and-dance sequence.

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National film award

Indian films bring export income and foreign prestige to India. In turn, the Indian government gives the Dadasaheb Phalke Award annually as a recognition to lifetime contribution to Indian cinema. The award is in memory of Dadasaheb Phalke, considered the father of Indian cinema.

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