Celebrating One Hundred Glorious Years of Indian Cinema

Raja Harishchandra was the first Bollywood movie that was released in the year 1913. At that time, no one in India had even a minute anticipation that Indian Cinema -- famously known as ‘Bollywood’-- would have such a huge impact on the Indian population. Bollywood has certainly come a long way in terms of both content and technology from a black and white movie in 1913 to 3D cinema today. In 2013, Indian cinema completed a centennial and this is truly one of the most exciting times in the Hindi Cinema industry. NDTV, a proclaimed Indian news portal, has illustrated a timeline of these hundred years through pictures. These pictures demonstrate the prolific journey that Indian cinema has completed through ten different decades, each decade having its own style of cinema.

Cinema actually has been the most vibrant medium for telling India its own story: the story of its struggle of independence, its constant struggles to achieve national integration and to emerge as a global presence. Indian cinema has over time and place, often represented Indian culture, values and traditions. Indian cinema has been a major export success and has emerged as a global brand across Asia, Africa and increasingly, Europe and America.

Bollywood has cast an indelible impression on social mores, from the people’s very psyche to its influence on consumerism in India and across the Indian Diaspora. This anniversary is not just one hundred years of celebrating Indian cinema, it’s indeed a century of soft power and the prevailing influence that Indian Cinema has had on audiences around the world.

The cultural traditions of India have played a significant role in making Indian cinema what it is today. The Indian cinema audience is a heterogeneous mix of tradition-bound illiterate folk to well-educated and modernized Indians. Both of these groups are products of their cultural tradition and the inevitable Western influence respectively. This complex composition of the audience leads to differing expectations that they have from the movies. Popular culture – the culture of mass appeal – that expresses itself through popular arts is the best index of a society's character and orientation. In India, no art form depicts Indian popular culture better than the highly culture-specific Indian popular cinema.

Indian cinema is usually classified into main streams - mainstream cinema and parallel cinema:

Mainstream cinema

Indian mainstream cinema is the family entertainer that usually includes a popular star cast in order to sell the film on their popularity and mass appeal. The mainstream cinema is a spicy mixture of genres; like the curry it is also referred to as “masala films”: a film combining comedy, drama, romance and action. The purpose of this genre is to appeal to as wide of an audience as possible. 1975 film Sholay is the earliest example of masala film, as well as being considered one of the greatest Hindi films ever. A 205-minute-long caper, Sholay follows two petty thieves as they try to capture a bandit for an ex-policeman, with romance, gunfights and tragedy in between. Interestingly, the film was a flop at the box office, but became an overnight sensation after the release of its soundtrack, becoming the hit of the seventies. It remains one of the highest-grossing films in Indian cinema. Sholay was a watershed moment for scriptwriters too, bringing professionalism to this previously poorly paid trade. According to an article in the entertainment magazine Variety, in Indian cinema “romance” is not one of the mold-breaking “Hindie-inides” or new Indian arthouse picks but it is a perfect example of the modern-day Bollywood mainstream. In a country where arranged marriages are still prevalent, Bollywood usually promotes love matches.

Sholay movie trailer

Parallel Cinema

Indian parallel cinema is known for its serious content, realism and naturalism, with a keen eye on the socio-political climate of the times. An article in the Telegraph highlights that “around the middle of the century, Indian cinema saw a move away from the traditional Bollywood film, focusing on life in newly independent India and the problems faced by those who lived there.” Critically acclaimed new wave trilogies include Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali, which depicts rural Indian life, and Meghe Dhaka Tara, which portrays the struggles of refugees of the partition.

In an interview with Bollywood director Soojit Sircar in an entertainment newspaper; the Hollywood Reporter, Sircar critically evaluates the evolving Indian film audience. He mentions that Indian audiences no longer just want to see “formulaic fare”. As apposed to earlier times, audiences today accept offbeat stories on unconventional subjects such as the arthouse film Ship of Theseus. The fact that Soojit Sircar had faith that the audiences would accept his movie Madras Café demonstrates that the audiences are embracing unconventional social subjects much more openly. Madras Café is a gritty hardcore movie set in the backdrop of the Sri Lankan civil war. It is not the usual family entertainer or the masala genre film; it's more a movie that would be prevalent in Western cinema.

Going forward, the challenge for the Indian film industry is to use technology in a better way to depict the stories. As mentioned by Bollywood super star Shahrukh Khan in an interview to the Hollywood Reporter, “we have to understand and not overestimate our story telling capabilities. We need to understand how to use technology more creatively.” He also specifies that parallel cinema has grown because of better technology in cameras and post-production: great work can be done at low costs.

Bollywood Beyond a Mere Source of Entertainment

Today, the purpose of Bollywood is not just to entertain the population of India; it is much bigger than that. I believe that Bollywood serves as a medium to unite the people of India in facing critical issues of the society. Indian cinema, despite all its peculiarities, has been a reflection of the socio-economic, political and cultural changes that have taken place in the country.

Unlike the popular cinema, the parallel cinema is almost always concerned with the common man of India. The heroes are not supermen with extraordinary ambition, who have to rise from poverty, tame the rich girl and fight the evil landlord, but ordinary men and women acting under the pressures of ordinary living. The movies made in this genre are generally neo-realistic, where the characters are not the stereotypical evil mother-in-law nor the suffering wife.

Increasingly, the media has scrutinized Bollywood for how it portrays significant social issues of the society.  Some of these issues are contemporary politics and corruption, Hindu - Muslim debate and the position of women in Indian society.

Case: Portrayal of Women in India

An article in the acclaimed Indian newspaper, The Indian Express elaborates on the debate over the depiction of women in Indian cinema. In the article filmamker Ramesh Sippy reasons, "As times changed, so did cinema. Unfortunately, people confuse demanding a fair portrayal of women with moral policing. They thereby question the presence of the modern woman — in terms of her attire, manner of speech and freedom — in Bollywood when they should be addressing the inequality of the character." Often times Indians blame Bollywood for classifying women as objects, as what they see in movies becomes a trend. However, what people fail to realize that the popular cinema is a product of fiction and not reality.

The debate about whether Indian cinema is responsible for objectifying women continues, as there is a rise in the crime against women. Many believe that the problem lies in the subliminal message packed in the suggestive songs and saucy dialogues. A highly respected writer/poet/director, Javed Akhtar, in an interview with The Tribune newspaper stated that “It makes the act seem innocent when it is not. They show the hero singing and following the woman to woo her even when she says no and that gives credibility and sanction to the act of eve-teasing; [showing] that this is a part of love.” While a certain part of the population might consider this to be true, there is a school of thought that believes otherwise.

Filmmaker and choreographer Farah Khan argues that, “Cinema has only been around for a 100 years; men have been treating women badly for much longer than that.” Hence, it will be unfair to blame Indian cinema for an issue that goes far beyond cinema. However, I believe that Indian audiences are ready for films that portray women in their true and positive light. This argument can be backed up by the success of female-oriented movies such as Kahaani (2010), No One Killed Jessica (2011) and the recent English Vinglish (2012).

English Vinglish movie trailer

Other than the issue of the representation of women in India, Bollywood movies have also influenced and impacted other social issues prevalent in the Indian society. One of these movies is My Name is Khan (2010), which deals with the subject of how the Muslims living in America were scrutinized after the terrorist attacks September 2001. According to a Bloomberg article My Name is Khan set the new box office record for the largest opening weekend for a Hindi movie in North America earning an estimated $1.86 million, grossing $18 million overall.

Another issue that has been brought to the attention of the Indians is the issue of corruption by the 2013 movie Satyagraha. According to a New York Times article, this is a movie that tale that pits “Gandhian righteousness against greed.” The movie leaves its viewers with an echoing question: “What kind of nation have we made?”

Satyagraha movie review

Bollywood is much more complex and a far greater agent for positive social change than is commonly acknowledged by those who claim to represent the high culture of India. Moreover, I believe that commercial or mainstream cinema is often what makes money for the industry, which is needed to produce any kind of future movies, even the realistic ones. Therefore, making multi-starrer ‘masala’ films should not be criticized, as the money made from them can be ploughed back into making socially impactful cinema.

Foreign Investment in the Indian Film Industry

Bollywood is a thriving industry – in 2012, nine films made more than 1 billion rupees (£ 12 million) each at the box office. The article in The Telegraph used in the previous entry also highlights that India produces the highest number of films annually, estimated at about a thousand titles. And big multi-national companies like Disney, NBC and Fox want a share of this pie. These companies want geographical expansion to be their next source of revenue, especially with the tremendous growth that Indian cinema has showcased in the last few decades.

There is statistical evidence that shows that it's time for the two industries – Hollywood and Bollywood – to come together for a greater share of revenue for both. According to an Economic Times article, “Hollywood's share in Indian cinema is 7-8% of the total box office collection of $1.5 billion.” However, a similar share is not captured by Indian cinema in the Hollywood industry. Although Indian cinema is among the top three foreign language cinemas, its box office collection is just a fraction of the US domestic box office, “which was $10.8 billion in 2012, up 6% from 2011."

The only way Indian cinema could make its mark in the Hollywood industry would be to produce content entirely in the English language. However, there still remain cultural and traditional barriers to this strategy. The entirely English language movies will not be received well by the Indian audiences. Moreover, the cultural aspect of Bollywood movies will not sync with the American audience. Therefore, there still remains a long way for Bollywood to establish a strong presence in the American entertainment industry.

On the other hand, Indian cinema appears to be a promising market for American entertainment giants. This is because Indian cinema is a booming movie industry with a wide diaspora of genres. Recently, with the rupee hitting an all time low against the US dollar , it provides American companies the opportunity to make a higher profit, as they get more revenue in rupees for each dollar invested in the Indian entertainment industry. With multiplexes making more money and the emergence of the middle-class audience, there are more screens to display content made by the American companies. American companies can benefit from making both original content for Indian audiences, as well as an export of American content.

Following the above logic, Walt Disney International has acquired a controlling stake in one of India's leading media and entertainment companies, UTV in early 2012.  Disney already owned 50.44 percent of publicly listed UTV and last July, it made an offer of $454 million to acquire the balance stake to gain a controlling interest in the group. Walt Disney International’s chairman Andy Bird believes that increasing their brand presence and reach in key international markets is a cornerstone of their growth strategy. He also states, “This acquisition expands our footprint significantly and allows us to more effectively build, monetize and brand multi-platform franchises, and deliver a rich library of content to the world’s second largest population.”

After interacting with Andy Bird at the USC Indian Film Centennial last week, I realized that Disney’s core strategy in India is to make specific original content for the Indian audiences. Bird has realized that in order to capture a wider audience in the Indian market simply exporting American content by dubbing in Hindi would not suffice. Indian audiences have very specific expectations regarding their cinema, which he believes Disney can achieve through this merger.

Since the integration of Disney and UTV in India last year, the studios’ team “has been looking for the right stories to develop into the first set of Disney branded local productions”, said Siddharth Roy Kapur, managing director of studios for Disney UTV. Disney plans to continue making movies that are “heartwarming, uplifting and fun for the whole family” which falls under the company’s theme. A interesting comment made in the article raises an important point that, “Using the Disney label by itself in the territory poses the question of whether the Mouse House is slowly getting a bigger hold of India, or if it’s India that is reshaping a Hollywood conglomerate.”

Disney's increased commitment to UTV follows a series of similar deals being brokered in India, a joint venture between 21st Century Fox and News Corp's Star broadcasting and media group, NBC Universal buying a stake in the entertainment division of New Delhi Television for $150 million and Viacom partnering with TV18, which runs India's version of CNBC.

In the future, with heavy foreign direct investments, the line between the Hollywood and Bollywood concepts of movies could seem to blur. However, Bollywood filmmakers need to be careful of not losing the distinctive appeal of Bollywood cinema, because that has proved to be Bollywood's core competitive advantage.