2. Indian Cinema
• What, according to you, is Indian cinema?
• Hindi Cinema/Bombay Cinema/Bollywood
• Tamil cinema/Telugu cinema/Bengali cinema
3. History of Cinema in India Part I
• 1896: First film show in Watson Hotel Bombay
• 1913: First Indian feature film Raja Harishchandra
made by Dadasaheb Phalke
• 1918: Cinematograph Act
• 1928: Indian Cinematograph Committee Report
• 1931: Ardeshir Irani makes Alam Ara, the first
talkie feature film
• Sound facilitates the growth of
(regional)language-based film industry
4. • Visibility of the regional film industry grew
with its confined market
• The practice of making bilingual/trilingual
films like M.S. Subbulakshmi starrer Meera
(1945)
• 1940s – 60s: Period of boom for local film
industries
• 1952: First International film festival held in
Bombay India
• 1960s: Emergence of parallel cinema in India
with filmmakers like Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen,
Ritwik Ghatak; Chetan Anand
5. Indian Film Industry and Genres
• Are Indian films organised in genres?
• The earliest genres made in Bombay include
mythologicals, stunt, devotionals, costume,
historicals
• Borrowing heavily from dramatic and visual art
practices
• 1930s saw an attempt of developing studios
similar to Hollywood
• The studios of the 1930s lasted for a few decades
till they were all dismantled by 1950s
6. 1930s and After
• Prominent studios of 1930s include Bombay
Talkies (Bombay), The New Theatres (Calcutta),
Prabhat (Pune)
• With the coming of studios, the bourgeois middle
class also takes part in filmmaking
• First time Indian films travel to international film
festivals
• Prabhat’s Sant Tukaram (1936) was sent to the
Venice Film Festival where it was declared one of
the top three films of the year
• The Second World War in some ways affect the
Indian film studios as well
7. • The studios worked with salaried employees
including script writers and actors
• Rise of music and the typical form of the Hindi
film in this particular decade
• Practice of playback and other important
sound techniques developed in this decade
• The rise of the “social” in post-independence
film industry; a “genre” which was began to be
made in 1920s
8. • “The social has always been the broadest and,
since the 1940s, the largest category and
loosely refers to any film in contemporary
setting not otherwise classified. It traditionally
embraces a wide spectrum, from heavy
melodrama to light-hearted comedy, from
films with social purpose to love stories, from
tales of family and domestic conflict to urban
crime thrillers.” (Rosie Thomas)
