Neo-realist Aesthetics

2015 ◽  
pp. 33-50
Author(s):  
Omar Ahmed
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Art Cinema ◽  
Indian Cinema ◽  
Film Maker ◽  
Satyajit Ray

This chapter examines the neo-realist masterpiece Do Bigha Zamin (Two Acres of Land, 1953) directed by Bengali film-maker Bimal Roy. Prior to the emergence of a distinctive art cinema led by Satyajit Ray and Ritwik Ghatak, the aesthetics and ideologies of neo-realism as a distinctive cinematic approach were reflected sporadically in the socialist agenda of films such as Do Bigha Zamin. While Ghatak was busy filming his first film, Nagarik (The Citizen, 1952), and Ray was still struggling with the first part of The Apu Trilogy, it was Bimal Roy, a film-maker now considered part of populist cinema, who made the earliest attempt to integrate neo-realist aesthetics into the framework of a mainstream project. The chapter considers the state of Indian cinema before the emergence of neo-realism; the influence of the IPTA (Indian People's Theatre Association); Bimal Roy as a film-maker; and the wider context including the Bengal famine of 1943–44. It also looks at Balraj Sahni's status as one of Indian cinema's first method actors; the links to Italian neo-realist classics such as Bicycle Thieves (1948); and, finally, the various Marxist ideologies that underpin such a despairing narrative.

The Trauma of Partition

2015 ◽  
pp. 69-86
Author(s):  
Omar Ahmed
Keyword(s):  
Historical Context ◽  
Art Cinema ◽  
Indian Cinema ◽  
Unique Position ◽  
Film Maker ◽  
The Family ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Satyajit Ray ◽  
Indian Art

This chapter shifts the focus to Indian art cinema with the Marxist work of Bengali director and iconoclast Ritwik Ghatak. The impressive Meghe Dhaka Tara (The Cloud Capped Star, 1960) is his best-known film. Dealing directly with the trauma of partition and its effects on a Bengali family, Ghatak's cinema is bold, uncompromising, and occupies a unique position in Indian cinema. Although his work is still somewhat overshadowed by that of Satyajit Ray, another masterful Bengali film-maker, and though many of his films are still sadly unavailable on DVD in the UK, Megha Dhaka Tara is now recognised as one of the key works of Indian art cinema. The chapter discusses numerous aspects, including Ghatak's position as a film-maker; the wider historical context such as the partition of Bengal; the relationship between melodrama and feminist concerns; the film's categorisation as an example of 1960s counter cinema; and the thematic importance of the family to the film's narrative.

Sound and the masters: The aural in Indian art cinema

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-66
Author(s):  
Indranil Bhattacharya
Keyword(s):  
Textual Analysis ◽  
The Other ◽  
Sound Recording ◽  
Art Cinema ◽  
Indian Cinema ◽  
Contested Terrain ◽  
Point Of Departure ◽  
Previous Scholarship ◽  
Satyajit Ray ◽  
Indian Art

The study of art cinema has emerged as a richly discursive, but, at the same time, a deeply contested terrain in recent film scholarship. This article examines the discourse of art cinema in India through the prism of sound style and aesthetics. It analyses the sonic strategies deployed in the films of Satyajit Ray, Ritwik Ghatak, Mrinal Sen and Mani Kaul, in order to identify the dominant stylistic impulses of sound in art cinema, ranging from Brechtian epic realism on one hand to Indian aesthetic theories on the other. Locating sound as a key element in the discourse of art cinema, the article surveys the different modes through which aesthetic philosophies were translated into formal strategies of sound recording, designing and mixing. Using previous scholarship on art cinema in India as the point of departure, this study combines theoretically informed textual analysis with new historical insights on Indian cinema.

Parallel Voices

2015 ◽  
pp. 127-144
Author(s):  
Omar Ahmed
Keyword(s):  
Major Part ◽  
Art Cinema ◽  
Film And Television ◽  
Indian Cinema ◽  
Film Maker ◽  
Film Making ◽  
Indian Art

This chapter assesses Shyam Benegal's seminal Ankur (The Seedling, 1972). The emergence of state-sponsored film-making in the late 1960s with Mrinal Sen's Bhuvan Shome (1969) laid the foundations for a new cinematic discourse, giving way to the next phase in the development of Indian art cinema, dubbed by many as ‘parallel cinema’. The work of film-maker Shyam Benegal forms a major part of the parallel cinema movement, and the rural trilogy of films characterising his early work not only sympathised with the oppressed underclass but also established an influential political precedent for many of the young film-makers emerging from the prestigious Film and Television Institute of India. The chapter looks at the origins and context of New Indian cinema, as well as the definitions of parallel cinema and its importance to the development of art cinema. It also considers Shyam Benegal's authorial status, key ideological strands, and the film's role in helping to politicise cinema in India.

Feminist Concerns

2015 ◽  
pp. 87-106
Author(s):  
Omar Ahmed
Keyword(s):  
Source Material ◽  
Film Festivals ◽  
Gender Representations ◽  
Rabindranath Tagore ◽  
Narrative Style ◽  
Indian Cinema ◽  
Film Maker ◽  
Bengal Renaissance ◽  
Central Characters ◽  
Satyajit Ray

This chapter surveys the career and legacy of Indian cinema's greatest film-maker, Satyajit Ray. If Raj Kapoor can be credited with popularising Indian cinema around the globe, then Satyajit Ray can certainly lay claim to bringing a measure of artistic credibility and sincerity to Indian cinema. Choosing a favourite Ray film was a tricky proposition given the consistency he maintained as a film-maker over four decades. He may have built his reputation on the Apu trilogy, winning major awards at film festivals, but his lifelong fascination with Bengali novelist Rabindranath Tagore provided the source material for some of his finest and most complex works. Charulata (The Lonely Wife, 1964) forms the focus for the chapter, which covers the Bengal renaissance, Satyajit Ray's status as an auteur, gender representations in the films of Ray, camera and narrative style, the relationships between the three central characters, political undercurrents, and the film's portrayal of married life in the Bengali middle class.

Erotic Spectacle

2015 ◽  
pp. 107-126
Author(s):  
Omar Ahmed
Keyword(s):  
Indian Cinema ◽  
Film Maker ◽  
Production History ◽  
Long Time ◽  
History Of ◽  
Critical Perspectives ◽  
The Erotic

This chapter focuses on the courtesan film in Indian cinema. The courtesan film has been popular with audiences for a long time but today it is rare to see a mainstream Indian film choosing to use the figure of the courtesan to address the concerns of women in society. An extension of the Muslim Social, the courtesan film reached its creative epoch in the 1970s, exhausting genre possibilities with the erotic spectacle Pakeezah (Pure of Heart, 1972). A complicated production, film-maker Kamal Amrohi took fourteen years to complete Pakeezah. Unfortunately for Indian cinema's tragedy queen, Meena Kumari, who starred in the film, alcoholism cut short her life, and she never got to see what many consider to be her most accomplished work. The chapter analyses Pakeezah from a range of critical perspectives, including the conventions, origins, and history of the courtesan film; the production history and struggle to finish the film; representations of the courtesan related to sexuality and eroticism; an analysis of the song and dance sequences and their relationship to ideology; and the demise of the courtesan film in the contemporary era.

Pinochet and I

1988 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 7-8
Author(s):  
Miguel Littín
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Film Maker

An interview with the Chilean film-maker who secretly returned from exile to make a clandestine film about the state of Chile

scholarly journals Malayalam Cinema from Politics to Poetics

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gönül Dönmez-Colin
Keyword(s):  
Golden Age ◽  
West Bengal ◽  
The State ◽  
Western State ◽  
Literary Traditions ◽  
The World ◽  
New Cinema ◽  
Satyajit Ray

MALAYALAM CINEMA FROM POLITICS TO POETICSINDIA IS the leading producer of films in the world with over 1000 films per year. The tiny south-western state of Kerala where a language called Malayalam is spoken has surpassed West Bengal as a major centre of art films. Its most important filmmaker, Adoor Gopalakrishnan is hailed as the living Satyajit Ray. Since the beginning of the 1970s, with the strong film society movement supported by the literary traditions of the state, Malayalam cinema has excelled in politically engagé films with artistic inclinations. When the Golden Age of Tamil and Telugu movies ended, Kannada and Malayalam cinemas came to the fore. Although, they too had their share of stars, the director came to be recognized as the most important person behind a film. The "new cinema" distinguished itself from the outset for its thematic excellence. Even the mediocre films initiated by...

Unruly Cinema

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rini Battacharya Mehta
Keyword(s):  
Film Industry ◽  
First Century ◽  
Art Cinema ◽  
Popular Cinema ◽  
Indian Cinema ◽  
History Of ◽  
Hindi Cinema ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Historical Periods ◽  
Systematic Exposition

Unruly Cinema is a meta-history of Indian cinema’s emergence and growth in correspondence with the colonial, postcolonial, and the neoliberal state. Indian popular cinema has grown steadily from the largest national film industry to a global cultural force. Between 1931 and 2000, Indian cinema overcame Hollywood’s domination of the Indian market, crafted a postcolonial national aesthetic, resisted the high modernist pull of art cinema, and eventually emerged as a seamless extension of India’s neoliberal ambitions. The major agent of these four shifts was a section of the Hindi cinema produced in Bombay, which came to be named and marketed as Bollywood in the twenty-first century. Through a systematic exposition of four historical periods, this book shows how Bollywood’s current dominance is an unlikely result of unruliness, that is, of a disorganized defiance of norms. Perpetually caught between an apathetic and adversarial government and an undefined public, Indian commercial cinema has thrived simply by defying control or normalization. The aesthetic turns of this cinema are guided by counter-effects, often unintended and always unruly.

Shadow Nationalism

Unruly Cinema ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 61-100
Author(s):  
Rini Bhattacharya Mehta
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Regulatory State ◽  
Popular Cinema ◽  
Indian Cinema ◽  
The Government

This chapter follows the trajectory of postcolonial Indian cinema and its negotiations with a regulatory state. Apart from exploring the apathy and political antagonism of the government, this chapter will explore how the dominant genres of popular cinema survived the Nehruvian regime of control and regulations by adopting and modulating a nation-statist ideology – in the form of a shadow nation – that could smooth over the contradictions between the progressive stance of the state and the regressive inertia of tradition and patriarchy.

scholarly journals Remapping the Visual Contours: An Enquiry into the Film Narratives of Adoor Gopalakrishnan

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (S1) ◽  
pp. 96-100
Author(s):  
Simi Varghese
Keyword(s):  
Film Industry ◽  
Indian Languages ◽  
Visual Narratives ◽  
Indian Cinema ◽  
World Languages ◽  
World Cinema ◽  
Master Craftsman ◽  
Satyajit Ray

Adoor Gopalakrishan has been the greatest film director who had elevated Malayalam film to the level of World Cinema. Truly, he is the master craftsman of Indian cinema second only to Satyajit Ray. He had discovered the identity of Malayalam through his visual narratives. He had metamorphosed each film as an experience and eked out a new visual repertoire for Malayalam films. Hitherto, no serious study has been conducted to absorb the visual magnificence of Adoor films. Concerted efforts have been initiated in other Indian languages and world languages to trace the visual dynamics employed in Adoor films. When foreign film critics approach his films seriously, even today we often falter to imbibe the film sensitivity and culture kickstarted by Mr Adoor Gopalakrishnan. Still, he is the ‘unravished fragrance’ of Malayalam film industry. Adoor has been truly one of the masters of world cinema and had carved a special niche for him in the global film map. My paper tries to portray the new visual fervor inculcated by Adoor films in the Malayalam psyche and will unravel the subtle nuances which deeply touch the labyrinthine milieu of Malayalam film world.

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