Writing Worth Reading
Writing Worth Reading
For almost 25 years, this was the only serious academic book in English devoted to Indian cinema. This book has since been overtaken by thousands of others, but for a long time it was the book. The early sections on the British period, including the struggle that film-makers faced, were very sound. The revised edition brought it up to date with some theory and the direction Indian cinema was taking.
Please tell us about your first recommendation, Indian Film by Erik Barnouw and S Krishnaswamy.
For almost 25 years, this was the only serious academic book in English devoted to Indian cinema. It was a struggle for film studies to be accepted in academia anyway, and when that struggle was going on the focus was on European films, Hollywood and in Australia, on national cinema. People weren’t paying much attention to Indian cinema. Erik Barnouw had a fine reputation as a scholar of the media and he had written three history books about broadcasting in America, plus other books. He became interested in Indian film at a stage when none of us at that point had the language skills. Erik teamed up with the son of a famous Tamil film-maker, M V Krishnaswamy, and the book was published in 1963, with a second edition being printed in the early 1980s.
This book has since been overtaken by thousands of others, but for a long time it was the book, and it wasn’t a bad book. The early sections on the British period, including the struggle that filmmakers faced, were very sound. The revised edition brought it up to date with some theory and the direction Indian cinema was taking.
I should say that the problem with discussing Indian cinema is that in some ways, there is no such thing. There are cinemas – Bengali, Tamil, Malayam, and so forth – and each is linguistically and culturally based. And overarching that is Bollywood, the films that are made in Mumbai. Bollywood seeks to be an all-Indian cinema but there are people who never watch it and prefer, say, Tamil films, or they might watch both. Some people think that Bollywood is Indian cinema but it’s not. Although it’s certainly the most important, it is only one amongst many.
When was Indian cinema born?
The first feature film made in India was made by Dadasaheb Phalke in 1913. That’s quite an interesting story in its own right. Phalke was a Brahmin from Pune district. He was well educated and his father was a professor. Phalke became interested in technology and went into printing and photography. The legend is that he went to see an Italian film called The Life of Christ and afterwards he said, ‘I could make a film about our gods.’ He is generally regarded as the father of Indian film.
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Brian Shoesmith is a professor at the University of Liberal Arts, Bangladesh, and is an adjunct professor at Edith Cowan University in Perth, Australia. He is the author of many books on Indian film.
