India

INDIAN CINEMA

The cinema in India has always been larger than life. It surrounds us physically through the giant hoardings, posters, and in some parts of India, huge cut-outs that are displayed all over the cities. It is an environment that seeps into the consciousness, intertwines reality with fantasy, and plays a determining part in the dreams, frustrations, and behaviour patterns of a large part of the population. Cinema in India is not confined to the 12,000 single-screen cinemas and 250 multiplex screens in the country where in the past year, over 1,000 films were made. It spills over and spreads in dozens of ways. On television as on the radio, it is film songs that are heard, film stars that are interviewed, films that are shown, either in their entirely or in programmes based on films, film stars who appear in the advertisements, endorsing products from soft drinks to refrigerators, soaps, shampoos, cars, any and every commodity gains from the tacit approval of the reigning stars of the day. Film music is replacing folk music particularly in the cities; it has displaced the music that the affluent young gyrate to in discos. It even provides the background to wedding ceremonies, in fact to ceremonies of all kinds. And even national newspapers thrive in proportion to the space devoted to the film world – the personal lives of the stars, their choice of partners, of life styles, their opinions on everything from fashion to current affairs.

But when one speaks of Indian cinema, one must necessarily speak in the plural: 16 languages; three forms – the "mainstream," the "art," and the "middle-of-the-road" cinema; and at least four major and several minor centres of filmmaking across the Indian subcontinent...

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