What happens to radical cinema in reactionary times?

The Revolution of Indian Parallel Cinema in the Global South by Omar Ahmed aims to define and contextualise the complex sociological and cultural phenomenon broadly known as “parallel cinema”. It is, on the one hand, a historical and chronological study, while on the other, an attempt to create a systematic rubric for future study in this area. This is supplemented by a series of case studies that focus on individual films and their cultural, technical, and aesthetic significance. Ahmed approaches his subject with a good deal of scholarly rigour but ensures that it remains accessible to a lay reader.

Parallel cinema has been for decades a catch-all term for a wide variety of films that have been made in post-Independence India. It has, however, always been a poorly defined term, which has meant that any film that deviated from the mainstream formula has been dumped into a bin labelled “parallel cinema”. Besides, it has also been traditionally associated with films that belong to a particular era made by some of the more famous names associated with the movement. This, as Ahmed points out, is misleading because it might seem that films popularly known as “parallel cinema” emerged fully formed at some point in the 1970s.

The second chapter of the book identifies the political and economic exigencies in pre- and post-Independence India that led to a strongly political cinema. It looks at the role of the Indian People’s Theatre Association (IPTA), Nehruvian attitudes towards cinema, film societies, and filmmakers from Bengal as important factors in the emergence of cinema that was a cultural response to the consequences of decolonisation. It is also worth noting that it is a product of a particular cultural milieu, and one can safely associate the movement with films made between the two most significant paradigmatic shifts to have happened in this country in the 20th century—Independence in 1947 and economic liberalisation in 1991.

While this does provide neat bookends to the subject, a phenomenon that covers the length and breadth of a country with startling differences in religion, language, landscape and culture requires careful delineation and analysis. The author organises his thesis around the need to acknowledge, study, and archive films that can be properly labelled as parallel cinema in the context of hegemonic hierarchies of what constitutes “important” cinema primarily dictated by Anglophone Western countries.

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The book reminds us that the importance of these films must be understood in their attempt to respond to the contingent circumstances at play during a time when embedded socio-historical and economic practices that go back centuries in the country were asked to engage with the demands of a modern, liberal, and secular identity after Independence. Consequently, the films become a vital medium through which one may understand the complex intersecting lines of insistent and contradictory demands of the cultural moment that produced it. This, however, does not make the job of defining the movement any easier.

Cover of Omar Ahmed’s The Revolution of Indian Parallel Cinema in the Global South (1968–1995) From Feminism to Iconoclasm

This is in no small measure because the filmmakers we associate with this movement have very contradictory views about the term. Shyam Benegal did not like the term at all because he believed that it created an unnecessary binary between popular films and films that must, by definition, not be as entertaining or popular. The author does a fine job of carving out, through sustained and nuanced study of the films of this period, a working understanding of the term that can be used for further exploration. It is also flexible enough to account for the often contradictory and varied elements that are part of the rubric established by the author.

The fourth chapter deals with films that were made during the Emergency, a period of two years when draconian laws on censorship were imposed by the Indira Gandhi government. Apart from the political ramifications of the period, it is interesting to note how Indira Gandhi’s attitude towards mass media significantly shaped its future until liberalisation. Unlike her father, she understood its influence well and took a series of decisions that would increase the reach of television and make it an important tool of propaganda for the ruling party.

Films, on the other hand, needed censorship, and the period saw the waning of the Film Finance Corporation (FFC), which had financed some of the most seminal films of the earlier decades. However, the author suggests that in spite of this, these two years produced some of the most impressive films allied to the New Left movement that had emerged during the Emergency. The decline of the FFC had far-reaching consequences because it marked the end of parallel cinema being predominantly a state-sponsored affair.

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The years following the end of the Emergency and leading to economic liberalisation in 1991 are identified as the “High Point” of the movement, in which films of remarkable quality, variety, and significance were made. Hence, the chapter addresses an important question—why did parallel cinema never get the same kind of intellectual prestige or cultural mileage despite the sheer number of quality films being made at the time?

The answers are not simple, nor are they facile. His insights into the formation of the National Film Development Corporation (NFDC) are particularly illuminating in this regard. NFDC flouted its own policies in order to support Gandhi, a decision that ultimately led nowhere because at no point did it reap any of the benefits of the film’s huge international success. The chapter also studies the rise of Smita Patil, who eventually became the most recognisable face of parallel cinema. Her untimely and unfortunate death further cemented her status as one of the greatest actors of Indian cinema, whose groundbreaking roles coincided with the rise of feminist movements across the country.

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The book suggests that parallel cinema declined after 1990 when the country went through a paradigm shift due to liberalisation. With the markets opening up and the country going through economic transformation, NFDC became increasingly redundant. The author holds the rise of the far right in India around this time as one of the factors responsible for the decline. He posits that a cinema that tries to give a voice to the marginalised and disenfranchised cannot long survive in an atmosphere of majoritarian tyranny. I found the section on Muslims and parallel cinema particularly insightful, especially because of the contextualising study of Anand Patwardhan’s Raam Ke Naam and Saeed Mirza’s Naseem.

The Revolution of Indian Parallel Cinema in the Global South is an important book because it creates a scholarly, balanced, and intellectually sound framework within which to define and analyse the films that we broadly understand as parallel cinema. The lists of films at the end of each chapter are very useful for casual viewers as well as students willing to take them up for further study. Parallel cinema is a serious cultural phenomenon in world cinema, and Ahmed’s book is an exemplary attempt at helping us understand that.

Arjun Sengupta teaches English literature at St. Xavier’s College (Autonomous), Kolkata. He takes courses on screenwriting, cinematic adaptations, and media in post-liberalisation India. He is the author of Shyam Benegal: Film-maker of the Real India.