Department of English MKBU
Name: Kinnari Halvadiya
Sem: 4
Paper No.: 15 Mass media and communication
Sub/ Topic: Cinema
Batch: 2019 - 2021
Submitted to: S. B. Gardi
E-mail: kinuhalvadiya17@gmail.com
Hello
Readers,
This is my Written academic
Assignment which is related with my masters, MA English literature sem4. My
topic about Cinema and media. So, let’s get some information about cinema and
media and how both are related to each other.
What is Cinema?
• Technically, the word itself derives from the ancient
Greek, kinema, meaning movement. Historically, it’s a shortened version of
the French cinematograph, an invention of two brothers, Auguste and Louis
Lumiere, that combined kinema with another Greek root, graphing,
meaning to write or record.
• cinema is much more than the intersection of art and technology. It is
also, and maybe more importantly, a powerful medium of communication. Like
language itself, cinema is a surrounding and enveloping substance that carries
with it what it means to be human in a specific time and place.
• It mediates our
experience of the world, helps us make sense of things, and in doing so, often
helps shape the world itself. It’s why we often find ourselves confronted by
some extraordinary event and find the only way to describe it is: “It was like
a movie.”
BRIEF HISTORY OF CINEMA
• 10 Lumière brothers' short films in Paris on 28 December 1895
• 1890s
films became several minutes long
• first
successful permanent theatre showing only films was “The Nickelodeon”
• In
1929, "The Lights of New York" the first talking film was screened.
• The
early 1990s saw the development of a commercially successful independent cinema
in the United States
• In
20s The documentary film also rose as a commercial genre for perhaps the first
time.
HISTORY OF INDIAN CINEMA
The
first Indian feature film, Pundalik was made in 1912, But it was shot by
English man.
• In
1913 Dadasaheb produced the first Indian film "Raja Harishchand “since
then to 1981 more than 15 thousand movies were produced in India.
• In
1983 it was India's sixth largest industry, grossing around 600$ annually.
• The
first ever movie to be screened in India was in Watsons Hotel in Bombay on the
7th of July 1986.
• In 1932
Indrasabha has about 70 songs. This was the era when music became a vital part
of the industry.
• Films
are made in almost 30 of the official languages but among them few are very
famous and commercialized. Those languages are Hindi, Tamil, Malayalam, Kanada,
Bengali, Telugu. This is a great deal of mobility in the Indian film industry.
Advantages of Cinema
Earning source for many
Encourages Artists
Refreshment
Entertainment
Exposure to Excellent Art Work
Educative value of Cinema
Truly speaking, cinema can even turn an
illiterate person into a man of knowledge and experience. (Mishra)
As a single coin has two sides, there
are also disadvantages of the cinema
In most cases ethical values are thrown
to the wind, and tinsel glamour and immoral ways are made highly attracting and
charming. Taking the glamorous cinema world as real, many lose whatever they
have by trying to copy such a world.
Instead of stressing hard work,
honesty, and perseverance cinema creates an unhealthy attitude by emphasizing
on luxury and comfort.
Dirty and obscene songs, dances, and
scenes put too much pressure on the minds of the adolescents and break their
moral restraints at ease. (Mishra)
Art /
Parallel Cinema
The Art Cinema is more realistic and
relevant as the needs of people and society. This form is not very popular. It
is also called ‘parallel cinema’. The Parallel
Cinema movement began to take shape from the late 1940s to the 1960s, by
pioneers such as Satyajit Ray, Ritwik Ghatak, Bimal Roy, Mrinal Sen, Tapan
Sinha, Khwaja Ahmad Abbas, Chetan Anand, Guru Dutt and V. Shantaram. This
period is considered part of the 'Golden Age' of Indian cinema. Satyajit Ray
is recognized as one of the greatest filmmakers of the 20th
century. (Cinema of India)
Art or parallel cinema that engages
with social issues like migration from village to city because of
Industrialization and how people are suffering because of poverty and problems
of land. The Parallel Cinema concentrates on contemporary socio-political
problems of the country. These films are made for the elite audiences and they
are expected to change their thought processes. Mostly, there are no idols or
stars in the art movie. There are only ideas that shake the minds of the
viewer. Examples of Parallel Cinema in India are - Do Bhiga Zamin, Pather
Panchali, Salam Bombay, Sati, Welcome to Sajjanpur, Chandni Baar, Lakshmi, Ishanou,
Leibaklei etc laying the foundations for Indian neo-realism and the Indian New
Wave. (Singh)
Mainstream / Commercial Cinema
Mainstream
Cinema is also known as Commercial cinema or Popular cinema and concentrates on
the entertainment needs of the masses. Mainstream or popular Hindi cinema is
also better known as "Bollywood" because such cinema is seen to
exercise widespread influence over people and enjoys mass appeal. Popular
cinema and culture derive from each other. Films are believed to be the opium
of the Indian masses as people rely on this medium to help them escape to
a world of fantasy. In a bid to reach the masses, mainstream cinema has become
melodramatic and rhetorical.
Satyajit
Ray v/s Karan Johar (Representation of India)
Both
directors are different from each other, Satyajit Ray has representing
the poor/real India where he has discussed the social and political
problems of the time and how people are suffering where landlords are take
advantages of poor people and harassed them. His movies are rooted
in reality and warranted a discourse over things that matter. They touched
various topics that are gnawing at the social fabric of our country and still
managed to entertain a wide variety of audiences. Satyajit Ray's Pather
Panchali is widely considered the best movie ever made in cinema history.
It's still shown in film-schools to help amateur filmmakers learn the ropes of
film-making and the art of story-telling.
In Pather
Panchali, he has presented the poverty and its setting is in the
village Nischindipur, rural Bengal which
gives the real image that India is like that. After brilliance
of Pather Panchali, let's not forget the other movies of the Apu
trilogy. Apur Sansar is one of the greatest movies of Indian cinema
history and can be seen as a pioneer of parallel cinema in India. Also, who can
forget little Apu’s love for his sister Durga and later for the young
16-year-old Sharmila Tagore in Apur Sansar.
On
the other hand, the way in which Karan Johar presented India as rich
country in most of his films where people are rich and it’s easy for them
go to foreign country and enjoy their life which is not the life of all people
in India. Romance and enjoyment are main important elements of Karan Johar’s
films to entertain people and in most of his movie setting is foreign country
rather than India which gives the wrong image about India to the outsiders who
don’t know anything about our country. In Ae Dil Hai Mushkil, we find
that the setting is of the foreign country as film starts in London than in
Paris and its story revolves around romance and break ups of hero and heroine,
no any serious issues or problems of society as well as young people are
presented in this which decreases the artistic value of cinema. In Parallel
cinema, we find that artistically which better camera work presented the
problems and issues of society in a serious way as identity of Gay and their
problems in Bomgay (Riyad Wadia) presented artistically and in
serious way while in Bombay Talkies the portrayal of gay identity becomes
silly and funny by its representation entertaining way which make it masala
kind of film with songs, romance and entertainment
We can divide cinema into two types
1) Dominant cinema
2) Counter cinema
Dominant cinema has been made for entertainment purpose. Basically,
the cinema is medium of entertainment which is based on fiction and gives aesthetic
pleasure to the audience which is prime aim of any work of art. The things used
to represent with the glamorization and more than real. Popular cinema can be
considered as a dominant cinema. Counter cinema is also entertaining the
audience but it has real story. It is based on reality which may be fails to
entertain the audience but the cinema has more than entertainment. The things
used to represent with the nude reality about the society and real problems of
the people as in film ‘Fire’, very openly represented taboo subject
of lesbian identity and give them voice for their rights and choices which is
part of society. Art cinema or parallel cinema can be considered as a counter
cinema.
Parallel
film sought to create some kind of insight into Indian life by capturing the
experiences and contradictions of a society in transition by converging on
small sections of Indian reality but explore their complex layers of meaning.
In particular a new type of woman is ascended which is contrasted strongly
(about Fire movie) with the dreamy traditional heroines of popular film as she
was placed in many different contexts, confronting a multiplicity of social
problems in which all areas of Indian social life were unprotected, inspected
and interrogated.
Cinema used to
describe every descent thing and if it is not that than it will be cover up by
glamour. Most of time the bright part of country has been shown more brighten
in the cinema. But the parallel cinema has focus upon the dark and the
grey part of country. The thing which may provide entertainment and it gives
feeling of relief or the reality will disturb the mind. Those who have money
and power have been never at the side of victims may they never feel that so it
was always voidable part of them and without feeling of such a pain one may not
understand. In parallel cinema,
camera watched the things from both side and then audience can decide or give
the judgment. Parallel cinema has been focused on the small corner of the India
it maybe corner of a small village of Gujarat or the corner of Calcutta.
Parallel cinema in India was produced after the Independence. After the
exploitation of 200 years how the Indian looks is described in the most of the
parallel cinema. Not the people are exploited by British but now their own
people have started to rule and again poor become worst.
Mainstream cinema based on the demands of the audience’s
entertainment and making money out of it rather to focus on the artistic value
of cinema. It sometimes only glamorizes the shallow image of the society rather
to go deep into roots of those issues and the problems. On the other side, it
has given great contribution in connecting entire Country. All mainstream films
are not same; some of them have deep insight into portraying the real
situations.
There is no doubt that cinema entertains the masses;
but it does not educate them.
• Today, people do not like taking advices and films
based on giving pieces of advices to the audience fails miserably.
Hence, the director whose sole aim is to gain a profit
from these films gives all such kind of non-sense in order to gain peoples
interest and money.
Conclusion:
The film industry has
grown rapidly for the past years and has brought about a lot of changes in the
society. It effects in a good way also and a bad way too. Film is a powerful
and effective genre of communication. Films draw heavily from reality,
portraying situations that have resemblance to the everyday stresses and
aspirations of viewers' lives. The movies recognize the link between their
lives and films in both general and specific terms. both types of
the cinemas have their different strategies according to the time and demands
of the audience. We can’t say that Parallel cinema is better than mainstream
cinema because it changes with the time and taste of the audience.
References:
- Sharman, Russell. “An Introduction to Cinema.”
Moving Pictures, 18 May 2020,
uark.pressbooks.pub/movingpictures/part/introduction/.
- We. “Essay Writer Services.” September 2019, 1
Jan. 1970, essaywriterservices1.blogspot.com/2019/09/a.
- Sharman, Russell. “A Brief History of Cinema.”
Moving Pictures, 18 May 2020, uark.pressbooks.pub/movingpictures/chapter/a-brief-history-of-cinema/.
- Bahadkar, Siddhi. Movies and the role they play.
21 June 2010. 27 March 2018 <https://www.youthkiawaaz.com/2010/06/movies-and-
the-role-they-play/>.
§
IndiaToday. 15 bollywood movies that educated us a
lot. 9 July 2015. 28 March 2018 <https://www.indiatoday.in/education-
today/featurephilia/story/bollywood-movies-and-education-281501-
2015-07-09>.
§ Mishra, Pooja. "Essay on Uses and Abuses of
Cinema." 23 September 2014. ImportantIndia. 3 April 2018
<https://www.importantindia.com/14375/essay-on-uses-and-abuses-of-cinema/>.
§ Sojitra,
Ami. "Art Cinema and Popular Cinema." 3 April 2017. Blogger. 4 April 2018
<http://amisojitra2015-2017.blogspot.in/2017/04/>.
Thank You Words: 2137
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