Regional cinema of India

One distinctive feature of the Indian cinematic landscape is the existence of its vigorous regional cinemas. In no other country in the world do we find such a large number of proactive, vibrant and self-contained regional cinemas. This is not merely a matter of the largeness of the country. China has even a larger population than India, but it does not have the kind of flourishing regional cinemas that India possesses.

This is a matter bearing on the cultural uniqueness of India - the diverse languages and cultures that large numbers of different members of the nation identify with. The existence, at times even flourishing, of such a range of regional cinemas gives Indian film world is distinctiveness. To deal comprehensively with all the regional cinemas of India, something not possible in a column of this nature, is to enter into the unique film culture of India,.

Diversity

India can lay claims to a rich diversity of languages (not dialects) and cultures that no other country has. There are at least 15 languages, and over 2000 dialects spoken in India, and films are made in all the officially recognised languages. Hindi, Tamil, and Telugu languages are the three languages that are associated with most number of films. Many of these films belong to what film critics generally refer to as popular cinema. A number of studies has been published in recent times that seek to chart the growth of these regional cinemas like Bengali and Malayalam and how they respond to contemporary challenges.

Even so, it is my conviction that this is indeed a topic that is under-theorised. Hence, both as a way of extending the discussion of Indian cinema and providing an intellectual framework for the understanding it we need to examine this topic.

The central point of regional cinema is that it is regional - that it deals with local cultural geographies. As we all know, there is no cultural geography without a cultural history; hence any discussion of a cultural geography locks us into a discussion of a cultural history as well. Regional cinemas seek to capture the force of local languages, local frames of awareness, role of cultural imagination. Hence these films tend to focus on symbolic systems that are associated with distinct regions.

One thing interesting about cinema is that it is generally regarded as a universal medium that speaks a universal language. However, at the same time, it is firmly culturally-grounded. This duality points to a significant fact about regional cinemas, namely, its interplay between regional, national and international imperatives.

Cosmopolitant intents

Regionalised cinemas are territorialised cinemas. At the same time they harbor cosmopolitan intents as well. As with Indian cinema in general, regional cinemas too consist of two streams - the popular and artistic.

The artistic filmmakers are interested in reaching a national, and if possible, international audiences.

The more successful among them, say, Satyajit Ray, Ritwik Ghatak, Mrinal Sen, Aparna Sen (Bengali cinema), Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Aravinadan and Shaji Karun (Malayalam cinema) have accomplished precisely that. Hence, any meaningful discussion of regional cinemas of Indian has to contend with this fact.

One can re-phrase this in a different way; in Indian regional cinemas we can discern a creative tension between a vernacular imagination that seeks to focus on the culturally and linguistically unique traits and a cosmopolitan imagination that seeks to embrace a much wider field of interest. Indeed, this interplay gives many of the more successful regional cinemas their vitality. To be sure, not all regional cinemas in India are equally vibrant and artistically successful.

Some like the regional cinemas in Bengal and Kerala have achieved greater national and international visibility than others. However, the important point is that these regional cinemas point to a unique feature of Indian film culture. They prefer not to compete for acclamation on any terms but their own.

Conventions

In order to understand the true nature and significance of regional cinemas we need to examine the cultural imaginary projected by them. Using culturally-grounded narratives, codes, conventions, semiotic of representation, myths, fables etc. regional filmmakers are keen to construct a regional cultural imaginary based on their Assamese or Punjabi or Maharashtra experience. At the same time, it has to be recognised that cultures are not timeless entities but products of history, politics and geography. They are sites in which frames of meaning relevant to everyday life are constantly made, unmade and remade.

What this means is that it is of the utmost importance that we explore this cultural imaginary projected by regional cinema in relation to the march of modernity.

In other words, culture and modernity are mutually constitutive. What is interesting about the more successful and accomplished regional films of India is that they vividly demonstrate the truth of this statement.

In order to understand the true power of regional films we need contextualise them culturally. This is, of course, not to imprison them in nostalgia or static cultures but to make them both reflectors and shapers of their respective cultures on the move. Films are necessarily interventions into ongoing cultural conversations.

The relationship between the national cinema and regional cinemas of India raises fascinating questions. Hindi is the closest to a pan-Indian language in India, although many in the south would contest this statement. If so, what is Indian national cinema? Satyajit Ray made films largely in Bengali, but he is regarded as a national filmmaker; Adoor Gopalakrishnan made films largely in Malayalam, but he is considered a national filmmaker.

Hence there is an evaluative component to our understanding and description of regional and national cinema. When regional filmmakers achieve success, win awards at international film festivals their works begin to be re-described as national films rather than regional films. This is indeed an interesting aspect of this discussion of regional cinemas.

Of the Indian regional cinemas, the two, in my judgment, that are most interesting are Bengali and Malayalam cinema. Hindi cinema or Bombay (Mumbai) commercial cinema which has grown into Bollywood, is more national than regional. Let us first consider Malayalam cinema which is in some ways, culturally speaking, closer to Sinhala cinema. The cinema of Kerala has achieved international visibility largely due to the highly commendable efforts of film directors such as Adoor Gopalakrishnan, G. Aravindan, and Shaji Karun.

Malayalam films

While popular Malayalam films bear the imprint of melodramatic romantic musicals- and they are produced in large numbers – the artistic cinema continues to grow within a neo-realistic framework. It is important to bear in mind the fact that the Kerala literacy rates are the highest in the country, and that there has been a vigorous literary and theatrical tradition that have contributed to the constitution of a vibrant film culture in Kerala.

Adoor Gopalakrishnan’s Elippatthayam (Rat Trap), made in 1981 brought him international critical acclaim and the British film institute award for the ‘maker of the most original and imaginative film.’ His other works such as Mukhamukham (Face to Face) and Ananrhram (Monologue) explore the concept of the self and its struggles to adapt to changing and demanding social circumstances.

Gopalakrishnan was closely identified with the New Indian Cinema. Those filmmakers who were identified with this movement sought to, following the lead of Satyajit Ray, create a realistic, non-melodramatic cinema that was marked by self-restraint. Filmmakers associated with the New Indian Cinema were keen to go beyond Ray and address issues of social significance and political relevance.

As in Satyajit Ray’s films, in Gopalakrishnan’s films too, we find remarkable use of understatement , a slow meditative camera that weighs patiently the meaning of the most mundane of events, avoiding the flashy exuberance one normally associates with popular films. In Mukhamukham, for example, Gopalakrishnan probes the theme of self and modernisation, this time taking a different tack from Elippathayam.

This film deals with the life and death of Sreedharan, a devoted Communist Party worker who was deeply loyal to the cause and much respected by his fellow-workers. He leads the trade union at a tile factory, and suddenly, to the utter astonishment of everyone, begins to shun politics. Once again the style of the film is deeply reminiscent of neo-realism. Gopalakrishnan was criticised by some for implicitly maligning the Communist Party politics.

Shadow Kill

A more recent film that demonstrates Adoor Gopalakrishnan’s innovative impulse is Nizhalkkuthu (Shadow Kill) made in 2003. It is a film that probes into the deep recesses of the human consciousness in a way that few filmmakers are willing to undertake.

In this film he explores the life of a hangman, Kaliyappan, a human being burdened with anxiety and anguishing over the memories of the many people he has hanged, especially one innocent young man hanged some twenty five years ago. What makes this film particularly interesting is the moving allegory that is inscribed in it. It addresses issues of human responsibility and human freedom through the experiences of a hangman overcome by guilt.

There are rich contrasts in the film: the hangman’s rope that kills the condemned also cures the sick. The rope has curative powers; when burnt before an image of Goddess Kali it tends to give away a magical ash that has the power to cure human ailments.

It is evident that the hangman himself is a reflection of the Goddess Kali; he is both destroyer and protector. As he ministers to others, he himself sinks further and further into mental anguish and physical discomfort.’ Anantharam’ is another interesting film by Gopalakrishnan that explores the intersecting themes of selfhood, memory, representation and fragmentation. There is a post-modern feel to the texture of the film.

G. Aravindan was the other filmmaker who contributed significantly to the creation of a strong art cinema in Kerala in the 1980s. His films such as Thampu (The Circus Tent), Kummaty ( The Bogeyman), Esthappan (Stephen) Pokkuveyil (Twilight Shadows) display his versatility as a film director. The Circus Tent examines the complicated and in many ways lonely lives of circus-players; he does so with an almost documentary authenticity in representing the world and the lives of the people he is imaginatively reconfiguring. Kummaty deals with the legendary figure of a mysterious wizard who figures prominently in children’s stories. Aravindan is able to depict his activities and the reactions to him with a sense of poetic charm. Esthappan is set among the Christian fishermen in Kerala and narratives the life and doings of a wandering spiritualist who exudes a sense of mystic aura. Pokkuveyil captures the life of a young poet who is increasingly finding it difficult to confront the harsh realities if life. Consequently, he is compelled to seek refuge in fantasy and day-dreaming. What is interesting about the film is that it has very little dialogue; the director relies on the creative use of visual registers and colors to narrate his story in cinematic terms.

Social order

Chidambaram, one of his finest films, is set on a commercial farm and it is evident that the characters are not tethered to a secure and stable social order; they are uprooted, alienated and transplanted into an artificial social context where they are forced to cultivate their individual selves improvising as they go along.

This film examines with great sensitivity the complex relationships among four characters; Shankaran is an office superintendant on a farm, Jacob is a field supervisor who is authoritative, Muniyandi is a labourer who is deeply religious and Shivagami, Muniyandi’s wife, who comes to live on the farm. Chidambaram deals with their convoluted relationships and the marvelously effective final sequence of the film takes pace at Chidambaram, the famous Hindu temple in South India where Lord Shiva is reputed to have been transformed into the famed cosmic dancer who enables human beings to free themselves from their mundane embroilments and experience the ecstasy of supra-mundane reality.

Aravindan who has always been deeply interested in exploring modes of religious and mythic consciousness in his films, is here clearly introducing a metaphysical note into his film. This film illustrates how a religious sensibility and cinematic sensitivity can come together in a fruitful union.

Shaji Karun is another film director associated with Malayalam cinema who has helped to gain international recognition for this regional cinema. When he first emerged as a filmmaker, he had already distinguished himself as a skilful cameraman. His first feature film, Piravi (The Birth) made in 1988 won for him great international acclaim. Based on a true story, the killing of Rajan that took place during the Indian emergency in the mid-1970s, it explores with great poetic sensitivity and cinematic understanding the anguished search of an old man for his lost son who was reported to have been taken into police custody.

The film is at one a study of human psychology and social injustice; and the director communicates his experience visually with great lyrical beauty. It is hardly surprising, then, that Piravi went onto win top awards at numerous prestigious film festivals in the world.

Artistic films

While art film directors in Kerala were busy with their artistic films, the popular cinema in Kerala was vigorously catering to the escapist desires and tastes of the majority of film-goers, producing what can only be described as cheap entertainment. These films offer romance, action, melodrama, seduction and murder in plentiful supply. As in many other sites in India, the film industry in Kerala has had its ups and downs, at one point, money from the gulf states began to pour into the film industry, but it is no longer the case.

As with most popular cinemas, the appeal of films was contingent on the drawing power of the actors and actresses. In Kerala, actors such as Mammooty and Mohanlal, who have had the privilege of acting in hundreds of films, were eagerly sought by film producers. However, we need to bear in mind that it is the art cinema that we are primarily concerned with.

The second important regional cinema that I wish to discuss is Bengali cinema. Of all the regional cinemas of India, it is Bengali cinema that has attracted the most intense attention both inside and outside India. Filmmakers such as Satyajit Ray, Ritwik Ghatak and Mrinal Sen have brought global fame to India.

And filmmakers belonging to a younger generation such as Gautam Ghosh, Aparna Sen and Buddhadeb Dasgupta, who contributed significantly to Bengali cinema in the 198s and 10090s, carried forward the art of cinematography put in place by Satyajit Ray and Mrinal Sen. What I would like to do is to discuss briefly the work of the three Bengali filmmakers Ray, Ghatak and Sen as a way of conveying the strengths of this regional cinema. When we talk of art cinema in India, the first name that springs to mind is that of Satyajit Ray. This is because he was primarily responsible for fashioning this genre and gaining international recognition for it. His first film Pather Panchali, ( The Song of the Road) made in 1955, was the first such film. In a poll conducted by the well-known British film journal Sight and Sound, this film was voted one of the ten greatest films of all time.

Pather Panchali represents the world of Apu, a little boy whose life and fortunes are recounted in two subsequent that form what is popularly referred to as the Apu trilogy. The second film in the trilogy, Aparajito (The Unvanquished) examines the evolving world of Apu from the age of ten to seventeen. And the third film in the trilogy Apu Sansar (The World of Apu), narrates his growth into adulthood, his marriage and fatherhood against the backdrop of city life in Calcutta.

It is important to note that these films offer a sharp contrast to Indian popular films. There is a pervasive visual lyricism and a deep humanism that marks these films and sophisticated lovers of cinema throughout the world found these features compellingly alluring.

Aristocracy

Ray went on to make such outstanding films such as Jalsaghar (The Music Room), Mahanagar (The Big City), Devi (Goddess), Charulatha and Ghare Baire (The Home and the World). Jalsaghar deals with an arrogant member of the decaying aristocracy and depicts both his refined taste and ruinous self-indulgence.

Mahanagar is given over to an examination of the impact of urban consciousness on human behaviour and sensibility, while Devi explores themes of religiosity and suppressed sexuality. Charulatha, which in many ways is one of the most accomplished films by Ray, deals with great sympathetic understanding and cinematic virtuosity the life of a young woman straining to come to terms with her enforced upper class idleness, unrealised artistic desires and forbidden love for her husband’s cousin.

Ritwik Ghatak was a different kind of filmmaker from Ray. His films such as Meghe Dhaka Tara (Cloud-Capped Star) Komal Gandhar (E Flat), Subarnarekha display his abundant talent and independence of mind. He was a deeply socially conscious filmmaker who was keen to make use of cinema for the purpose of moral edification and consciousness-raising. In addition Ghatak was able to use melodrama effectively in the service of high art, a definite departure from Satyajit Ray’s aesthetic. He deployed his soundtrack’s density which was often full of anti-naturalistic sounds and unusual focal techniques to focus on his Marxist-inspired political thinking. In his use of melodrama, he harked back to the Indian theatre traditions and myths and archetypes. He was deeply distressed by the partitioning of India and that finds poignant expression in his cinema.

The third important Bengali filmmaker that I wish to comment on briefly is Mrinal Sen. He started out as radical filmmaker and was bent on making cinema a site for social engagement. In some of his films such as Interview he was able to accomplish this objective with cinematic persuasion. He is the author of such well-known films as Bhuvan Shome, Akash Kusom (Up on the Clouds), Interview, Calcutta, Akaler Sandhaney (In Search of Famine). Ekdin Pratidin, (And Quiet Rolls the Dawn), Khariji (The Case is Closed) and Genesis.

To give a sense of his interests and style as a filmmaker let me cite ,one of his early films, Akaler Sandhaney. It was made in 1920 and depicts an idealistic middle class film director who is deeply convinced of the power of his chosen medium to bring about social change. He comes to a village with the aim of recreating the great Bengal famine of 1943. The film he is determined to make is called In Search of famine. As he begins to shoot the film it dawns him that nothing very much has changed since 1943 famine. The way Sen explores this narrative attests to his imagination and skill as a filmmaker.

Variety

I have given you a glimpse of the strengths and variety of Bengali cinema. What is interesting about these films is that they are both regional and national films at the same time, and as I pointed out earlier, there is indeed a fine line between regional cinema and national cinema. I would like to conclude these observations by commenting on a new book on Bengali cinema titled, ‘Bengali Cinema: An Other Nation.’

It is by the film scholar Sharmistha Gooptu. There have been many books and monographs written by journalists, film critics and film scholars and cultural commentators on this regional cinema; however there have been relatively few academic explorations of this topic. Sharmistha Gooptu’s book on Bengali cinema, which is based on her doctoral research at the University of Chicago, clearly belongs to the rare category of scholarly investigations into Bengali cinema. It is full of new and interesting information; its analytical approach which focuses on the discursive formation of Bengal cinema is fresh and insightful. She has sought to situate Bengali cinema in its proper social, political, cultural, economic and ideological contexts. She has, for the most part succeeded in her attempt.

The book consists of an introduction, a discussion of the early years, the idea of a Bengali cinema, Bengali and national cinema, the transition to regional cinema, Bengal love stories in film, common man’s comedy, Satyajit Ray and the Bengali cinema, changing contexts and new texts. There is an epilogue and afterword to round out the discussion.

Thus, it can be described as a comprehensive treatment of the growth of cinema in Bengal. Bengali cinema, to be sure, has produced outstanding film directors such as Ray, Ghatak and Sen. The author of this study has patiently explored their work as well as other gifted filmmakers from Bengal, never losing sight of her declared goal of examining the discursive production of Bengali cinema.

Bengali cinema

Sharmistha Gooptu, at the beginning of the book, makes the following assertion.’ This book re-examines the Bengali cinema. It makes the argument that Bengali cinema, from the time of its inception, has been a key economic institution which must be considered for what it brings to bear upon our existing sense of Bengali and Indian history.’

This is indeed a very constructive approach to Bengali cinema; it is the kind of approach that is conspicuously absent from many of the other books on this subject which are often confined to plot commentaries and broad historical growths.

One of the strengths of the book – and there are many – is the interesting way in which Gooptu juxtaposes the widely circulating concepts of Hindi national cinema and that of Bengali cinema. It is her conviction that Bengali cinema furnishes us with a counter-argument to the influential valorisation of Hindi films as constitutive of national cinema.

Through this juxtaposition, she is able to deconstruct the popularly held notion of Indian cinema in productive ways .Through a careful de- coding of important concepts such as modernity, nationhood, indigeneity, social formations and cultural logics, the author succeeds in examining the discursive production of Bengali cinema lucidly and cogently.

Sharmistha Gooptu’s study contains much useful information related to Bengali cinema and she has opened potentially productive lines of inquiry that others could pursue with confidence and profit. There are a few areas that in my opinion deserved more careful attention. For example, although the author refers to the relationship between visual culture and the public sphere, she does not follow that insight with the commitment it deserves.

Miriam Hansen, in her remarkable study of early Hollywood cinema, titled Babel and Babylon, (which Gooptu cites in relation to the idea of vernacular modernity), demonstrates persuasively how the emergence of spectatorship can be usefully linked to the historical transformations of the public sphere.

Issues

Bengali cinema has played and continues to play a very important role in the public sphere in the Habermasian sense. The films of Ritwik Ghatak, Mrinal Sen and Satyajit Ray, among others, contributed hugely to the generation of a broad range of issues related to Bengali society as it transformed itself in response to newer challenges.

I also felt that the classical roots of Bengali cinema and the impact of theatre could have been explored more fully. After all, a filmmaker such as Ghatak started in the theatre and drew on its plentiful resources. A third area is the attempt by some film directors to work towards an indigenous poetics of cinema. The work of Ritwik Ghatak, for example, which drew on certain visual registers associated with traditional art and painting and his penchant for melodrama deserve nuanced analysis. He sought to fashion an indigenous poetics of cinema and non-Bengali filmmakers like Kumar Shahani have been inspired by this effort..

All in all, Bengali Cinema: An Other Nation can be recommended as a useful addition to the growing body of exegetical writing on Indian cinema. It is historically informed, theoretically sophisticated, and forcefully rigorous in its interpretations.

It enables us to re-think the concepts of regional cinemas and national cinema in interesting ways. A study of regional cinemas of India is a topic that invites deep and sustained study.