the magazine outlook is celebrating its 10 year anniversary with a series of articles on indian film, 1995-2005. the entire issue is here. one of the more interesting articles is this one which makes the case that while bollywood has swamped all other indian cinema in marketing terms, excellent regional and parallel cinema continues to thrive. after summing up the dominance of bollywood chatterjee writes:
Yet, look around the country today and you are unlikely to find a single ‘serious’ regional filmmaker who is out of work. Some are not as prolific as the others, but they are all doing fine. Adoor and Shaji N. Karun in Kerala; Girish Kasaravalli in Karnataka; Mani Ratnam in TN; Dasgupta, Goutam Ghose, Aparna Sen and Rituparno Ghosh in Bengal; Palekar and the Sumitra Bhave-Sunil Sukthankar team in Maharashtra and Jahnu Barua in Assam continue to make films at their own pace and on their terms while seeking to inch close to the mainstream national production-distribution network structure without compromising on their independence.
Adoor’s last two features—Kathapurushan (1996) and Nizhalkkuthu—were part-produced by Japan and France respectively. Shaji’s lush 1999 film, Vanaprastham, had French backing and he followed it up with a Hindi-language effort, Nishaad. Palekar, coming off three Marathi films—Bangarwadi, Dhyaas-Parva and Anaahat—joined forces with actor-producer Shah Rukh Khan to direct his most ‘commercial’ film to date, Paheli.
so, why do none/so few of these movies ever make it to the american arthouse circuit? i watched the excellent “kathapurushan” at an asian film-festival in l.a many years ago but outside of the stray festival appearance there is nothing. indian grocery stores carry some regional film, and netflix has an unpredictable selection as well, but surely arthouse chains like landmark could wade in these waters too. chatterjee offers an initial explanation:
n the ’90s, the world’s perception of Indian cinema went into a warp. For most cineastes, Indian films once meant the work of the likes of Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen and G. Aravindan. Today, Bollywood kitsch dominates all discourse about Indian cinema to the latter’s detriment.
as someone who is also a big fan of bollywood i was glad to see him go on to acknowledge the following:
So, away from conventional Bollywood movies, there still exists an Indian cinema far richer in thought, substance and diversity. But the boundaries are blurring. Socially realistic films do not spring only from outside India’s moviemaking epicentre, Mumbai. Numerous filmmakers in the city of dreams are far closer in spirit to the Kasaravallis and Adoors than they are to Yash Chopra and Subhash Ghai.
he still ends on a pessimistic note, saying that serious films and successful films are mutually exclusive categories, but i don’t know if that is necessarily true anymore. part of the problem in india has been that there are so many films released every week. the pressure/competition for screens was/is immense (most theaters were single-screen operations). in the past, therefore, the only way independent/art cinema could thrive was via government support/sponsorship (which is partly what makes some of these films of the 80s and early 90s so hard to find–god knows what’s happened to the prints). now, however, multiplexes have sprung up all over the major metros, and this provides an avenue for smaller films. and there does seem to be a genre of multiplex cinema springing up. and within bollywood as well the aesthetic has become more varied (as mike will confirm from his viewing of “company”). it will be interesting to see where all this goes, even if we can’t get access to a lot of this non-mainstream cinema.
It is necessary for these filmmakers to make it big in the States? Landmark Cinemas, as you already know, does not serve as a distribution company. Do these films compete at Cannes or Toronto, Venice or Berlin or Sundance for that matter (these seem to be the sites at which acquisitions are made for the American art-house consumer)? Do the filmmakers want to compete at these festivals? Maybe these filmmakers are paying the bills and getting their work out to the audience most important to them. I’m certainly curious about the films but I’m not sure these filmmakers or titles have ever popped up in Cineast or Film Quarterly or Sight & Sound or Film Comment or Twitch.net, etc., etc. These are the places (outside my web roving) where I go when I’m looking for something new.
Well, I just spent some time over at Outlook (which I found to be lighter than expected–an expat-Indian version of USA Today and Entertainment Weekly?). Still, I think N. Chandra Mohan’s thoughtful essay answered a number of the questions I posed above. Most of the films discussed in this special issue don’t strike me as “art films” per se but maybe reflect a newly emergent mainstream Indian cinema with something more on its mind than recontextualizing American genre flicks. The idea that my $6 are of no interest to the filmmakers/producers is kinda cool (especially if they can market and reach the NRI diaspora without feeling the need to go to Cannes or Sundance). Also, I can’t help but be excited by the fact that Mira Nair will be adapting Tony Kushner’s Homebody/Kabul for HBO.
it is by no means necessary for these filmmakers to make it big in the states. what i am more troubled by is that they have no exposure whatsoever in the states–as opposed to say a francois ozon, or alomodovar or wong kar wai. this is a loss less for these filmmakers than it is for serious american filmgoers who might like their films if they could see them. an indian filmgoer in india has a much better shot of seeing a spike lee or sayles film (on dvd if nothing else) than a filmgoer in the u.s has of seeing gautam ghose’s “paar” or anything by adoor, or by ray’s contemporaries ritwik ghatak and mrinal sen. (it is yet another matter that older indian art films aren’t even that easily accessed within india.)
indian filmmakers have been at the major film-festivals (and have been winning awards there) since the 50s. for some reason whoever all the people are who buy and distribute european art films in the u.s have never made much of an effort to do the same for indian directors. i doubt this has anything to do with the directors’ possible lack of interest in finding an american audience; probably has a whole lot more to do with the fact that india only registers in the u.s in terms of the exotic. people like shyam benegal and adoor gopalakrishnan (from the second wave of indian art cinema) are very well known in serious film circles outside the u.s (most of benegal’s great 70s films are available on netflix, as i’ve noted before). it is bollywood blockbusters that are content with the nri market outside india. this market for the most part has no interest in indian art cinema–just as your average hollywood viewer has no interest in john sayles. but the bollywood blockbuster also fits the “exotic kitsch” bill, and so takes up all the possible space alloted to “indian cinema” in the american imagination.
i don’t think recontextualizing american genre flicks has ever been on any indian filmmaker’s mind–commercial or art.
by the way, outlook is not an expat publication. it is based in new delhi. it is more like an indian version of time or newsweek (though i find it more interesting than either).
First, the little I know of Indian cinema is framed by discourse surrounding Bollywood, which seems to be a style (I’m not really sure what Bollywood means or who coined the name or what forms of power are at work in the very word) that recontextualizes Western or Hollywood tropes for Indian audiences. I do think there is more space in my imagination for great filmmakers from any country. I am continually on the lookout, monitoring all of the film festivals so I can locate titles to pursue via the cinema or DVD (so why are the filmmakers you mention not making my radar . . . I certainly resist the notion that I am biased against Indian cinema). I too question why the filmmakers you mention have so little exposure in the States (are they more appreciated in England). I also wonder what it is about Chinese or Taiwanese or Korean or Brazilian or Iranian filmmakers that make them more “accessible” to American art house distributors (the films I’m thinking about don’t stike me as exotic kitsch). I have seen a handful of Satyajit Ray films and a few of the crossover films from the last decade (Lagaan) but for the most part I am ignorant. A Google search of Adoor Gopalakrishnan left me wanting more depth. One voice suggested his films (particularly the materialist critiques) demand from his viewers specific knowledge of local customs and politics. True? Shyam Benegal (who has made 69 films!) sounds more accessible to me–especially Trikal, Suraj Ka Satwan Ghoda, Ankur, and Nishant. Further exploration on IMDB left me with few sources to acquire more knowledge about this man’s work. Is there a filmmaker working in India right now at the same level as Pedro Almodovar and/or Wong Kar Wai (I’m not willing to put Francois Ozon on their level)? Finally, I didn’t mean to disparage Outlook by calling it an expat publication.
jeff, i don’t know what you’ve read to arrive at this notion but it is not a very useful way of understanding indian commercial cinema (bollywood refers to bombay commercial cinema in hindi). the bombay industry is almost as old as hollywood, and is a hybrid of all kinds of things–folk theater, hollywood musicals, italian neo-realism etc.. it has its own aesthetics and conventions and while it borrows promiscuously from everywhere, to describe this as reconceptualizing western forms/tropes for indian audiences is to overemphasize the importance of western forms/tropes.
as for why indian art films are not making your radar–the fact that they are not is exactly my point. and i didn’t mean to suggest that you are individually resistant to non-commercial indian cinema. adoor’s films do require some work from non indian viewers but no more, i would imagine, than something like bertolucci’s “the spider’s stratagem” (or in a different way a lot of bergman or tarkovsky’s “andrei rublev”) does. and the indian art tradition really has a far more direct connection to european art cinema than bollywood does to hollywood so it should be very accessible at one level to serious cineastes.
and yes, there’s far greater knowledge of these filmmakers outside the u.s. there have been festivals of ghatak’s work (a contemporary of ray’s, who i prefer actually) in paris, the bfi has released some of his films on dvd; adoor’s recent films are financed by japanese and european companies etc. etc.
i’m not sure what you mean by “the same level”. most indian art film makers are not formally flashy in the way that almodovar or wong kar wai are. by which i mean only that hyper-stylization is not a defining characteristic–their work can be formally challenging in other ways. are there filmmakers whose work is as interesting in their own right? sure–adoor, gautam ghosh/ghose, kumar shahani, amol palekar (another interview with palekar), buddhadev dasgupta etc. etc. and i’m sure i’m very out of date given that i don’t live in india anymore.
i’d urge you to check out benegal. in this order: “ankur”, “nishant”, “bhumika” and “trikal” (netflix has all of these).
here’s a link to a useful site on the first and second wave of indian art cinema.
This is useful and appreciated. Thanks.
hey Arnab-
I’m going to (slowly) do some reading and watching–thanks very much for giving us this whirlwind overview of Indian flicks.
Can I ask of other folks–I’d love for folks with their own specialties or interests or hobbies to chime in with this kind of fantastic thumbnail overview of debates about, trends within, and fine examples of a particular area of cinema. Jeff: stuff with cute little kids? John: Jerry Lewis and the comedy of abjection? Frisoli: ’70s cinema? Mauer: send us your zombie thing! Molly: animation & propaganda? Who else is there?
I’ll get a posting on crap cinema together. “Baby Geniuses” will start the ball rolling….
some good news here
I watched Shyam Benegal’s Nishaant (1975) yesterday and found it to be a curious mix of genres and styles. I would describe it as a post-colonial, social justice melodrama in which French new wave cinema and Italian neo-realism seemed to be very influential (especially the strong visual compositions occasionally interrupted by shaky, hand-held camera work that provided contrast to the more formalist elements of the mise-en-scène with a direct shot of cinema verité). The use of color was also very prominent even if the transfer to digital video was quite shoddy. I liked the film’s rhythms, especially when it provided me a glimpse of everyday life (particularly domestic life in a rural village; it was also illuminating to see the folk theatre performance), though I found the moving back and forth from documentary form to the more blatantly melodramatic storyline to be problematic. I also liked the strong voices of women in the film (one might actually suggest the film to be a virulent critique of Indian masculinity, but I cannot be sure if that was intended). The young woman who plays the schoolmaster’s wife, Shabana Azmi, had the most interesting and multi-dimensional character in the film. I appreciated the way her character’s choices (and to a lesser extent the ineffectual son of the local landowner/tyrant) provided some ambiguity in a film that seems so certain about its politics. What frustrated me was the simplicity of the dramatic narrative. The bad guy is really, really bad and decadently vain (he wears western clothes and shaves his underarms and keeps a male servant around him at all times giving him massages). He even has a dark, pointy moustache. He’s like an Indian Simon Legree. And though I suspect this is a problem of translating the dialogue into English subtitles, the characters seemed to speak in platitudes and clichés (the old adage to “show not tell†is, more often than not, ignored). In the end, I appreciated how quickly the film moved and how compelling the melodrama proved to be (I was angry and wanted justice, which, I imagine, is exactly how I was expected to respond). Indeed, while watching Nishaant, I was pleasantly reminded of social justice melodramas from my youth (Billy Jack or Walking Tall, for example) and how powerful I found those films to be as I was formulating my own sense of right and wrong. Next up Benegal’s Trikal.
Though it was slow and I felt like I could use a bit more of a history lesson, I liked Shyam Benegal’s Trikal (1985). First, the cinematography is stunning (the use of light and color). I also found the dramatic narrative to be much more sophisticated and complex than the earlier film. Trikal is a multi-generational epic set in Goa in 1961 as the Indian Army is preparing to send the Portuguese back to Europe. The film centers on a Portuguese family who have lived many generations in India (there are only a couple of “Indian” characters and I’m not sure what to make of that . . . is Benegal being nostalgic? If so, for what? Are there Portuguese connections in his family?) but the violent legacy of colonialism is catching up with them. There is a love story or three, some unrequited love, ghostly visitations from murdered innocents, a couple of songs, etc. But mostly the film chronicles a few months in the life of a family whose fortune and power are about used up (the film begins with the death of the family patriarch and the family’s fortunes descend from there). Trikal moves slowly but with purpose and I found myself very engaged by the action (but wishing I had an expert by my side to provide some needed context). You remember, in Apocalypse Now, when Martin Sheen and company visit the estate of a French family still living in Vietnam? Well, Benegal sets his entire film in such a world and it makes for a very beautiful and intriguing work of cinema.
jeff, the family in “trikal” aren’t portuguese per se, but creoles–and in this case probably upper-caste hindus who converted many generations ago (caste issues linger in the movie–as when a marriage with another creole boy is frowned upon by the matriarch). as the movie suggests, the lives of the creoles were completely intertwined with those of others in goa and questions of identity became heightened with the end of portuguese rule in 1961 (india became independent 14 years earlier). “trikal” isn’t my favorite benegal movie but it is pretty good. i’d recommend “bhumika” or “ankur” for your next outing. netflix doesn’t have “mandi”, “manthan” or “aakrosh” but you wouldn’t regret the investment in buying them, i don’t think. his more recent movies aren’t as good.
i also think “nishant”–one of the most disturbing films i’ve ever seen–is a better film than “trikal”. why did you think the critique of patriarchy in it might not be intended? if by the bad guy you mean the eldest of the four landowner brothers, i didn’t actually think he was portrayed as being all-bad–certainly the two brothers who abduct azmi’s character are shown as being far worse (they’re all brothers, no fathers and sons here). and all the non-peasant men wear western clothes, not just him. and the omni-present, massage-giving servant is merely a trapping of feudalism (lots of “good” people have such servants too). i also really liked smita patil’s character (the wife of the youngest brother). and yes, the dialogue problems must be a function of the subtitling–i remember it being very taut and dialect-specific.
Yeah, you’re right. They are four brothers, but the eldest brother is definitely the man in charge (the only character in the film with a servant and every time we see the servant he is either massaging this character’s chest–while straddling him–or his legs, or he is shaving the man’s armpits, which seems to signify something a bit more decadent than the norm). The middle brothers are little more than henchmen and, ultimately, cartoons (though frightening cartoons). The youngest brother is interesting, but you are right, his wife is a more complex character (I think I noted my interest in the women’s voices though I did not single her out). Are the schoolmaster and the religious elder wearing western clothes? Finally, I didn’t wonder if the film critiques patriarchy but if the film is indicting postcolonial Indian masculinity (the religious leader is ineffectual, the schoolmaster is ineffectual, the younger brother is ineffectual, the eldest brother duplicitous and decadent, the middle brothers are thugs, the vigilante mob is also problematic for a variety of reasons). As for Trikal, I do appreciate the historical context, but can you be Hindu and practice Catholicism? Or am I missing something else when it comes to religious practices in colonial India? All of the characters in Trikal are speaking Portuguese at the beginning of the film until the Indian narrator decides they should speak Hindi (?), which was a fascinating little narrative shift (and is ripe for ideological interpretation). Still, it is obvious they consider themselves belonging to two worlds (they tell the local Indian doctor that his son–our narrator–cannot woo Anna–the matriarch’s granddaughter–because the two communities cannot mix, so if they are creole or multi-ethnic, they seem to be in huge denial).
“nishant” is actually set in the mid-1940s. the location is the princely state of hyderabad (most of which is now the state of andhra pradesh). so its critique of masculinity/patriarchy isn’t exactly in post/colonial terms. and i don’t think the critique is simply one of ineffectual men, but of feudal structures as a whole. the reason the schoolteacher doesn’t rescue his wife earlier is that he literally can’t–the landlords operate with impunity (the local policeman is their stooge, colonial authorities don’t particularly care etc.). what benegal is doing in the film is connecting up personal outrage (the outrage visited on the schoolteacher and his family, who have come from the city) with a simmering rural discontent with the brutal zamindari system. the eldest landlord is literally the lord of the village–the upheaval at the end is a violation of all kinds of things. benegal, of course, complicates matters with the women and their own ambivalent desires.
re religion in “trikal”: religious conversion in india doesn’t equate a jettisoning of past practices. there are muslims and christians all over india who maintain hindu structures in their daily lives. thus ex-high caste hindu catholics in this film are highly conscious of the (long-ago) origins of other catholics. as many untouchables/dalits have found out, simply converting away from hinduism doesn’t do away with their problems. make sense? the language shift in the movie–very cleverly done in the movie–may be driven by the fact that the audience for the film would not understand a word of portuguese. (just as the characters of “nishant” would probably not speak hindi either). language is a very complicated question in indian fiction/film–i’d be interested in your interpretation of it here.
Let me think further on that language shift, because I did have some ideas. Although Nishaant is set in the 1940s (which I did not know although the eldest brother’s suit coat, which he is wearing earlier in the film, is definitely 40s style. I suggest the film to be a postcolonial critique only because I “assume” that Benegal is using history similarly to the way Brecht uses history, and that his film is addressing contemporary issues of Indian national identity (as fractured as that may be) relevant to audiences in the mid-seventies as much as he is telling a story set thirty years earlier (in the same way that Cinderella Man seems to comment on the welfare state or suggests that those who oppose ideological norms will always fail while plucky American ingenuity will win out in the end).