The production of films increased manifold and films became the major source of mass entertainment. The industry still continues to grow in spite of the fact that today television broadcasting is also a competing source of entertainment. After producing 1288 silent films from Raja Harishchandra (1913) to Alam Ara (1931), the industry produced 233 films in the year 1935 itself and the production kept increasing steadily. In the year 1990 the industry produced as many as 948 feature films! Today we produce more than a thousand films a year, which is almost three films a day!!
The government of independent India pursued the Nehruvian dream of a socialist pattern of society. Seeking equality, justice and peace, Nehru’s dream of an equitable society fired the imagination of the Indian people who after almost two hundred years of foreign rule sought to create a politically, economically, culturally, morally and ethically strong society that would be forward looking and modern and at the same time value the glory of its past history. The filmmakers were also touched by this new hope of a better society. Bimal Roy, Raj Kapoor and Guru Dutt were three big names in mainstream Hindi cinema who made films on the theme of a social regeneration. Raj Kapoor’s Awara (1951), Boot Polish (1954) and Jagte Raho (1956), Bimal Roy’s Do Bigha Zameen (1953), Sujata (1959) and Bandini(1963) and Guru Dutt’s Pyaasa (1957) and Kaagaj Ke Phool (1959) are good examples of such films.
In 1953, Bimal Roy, inspired by the neo realist film movement in Italy (see the chapter on Film Movements) made the film Do Bigha Zameen. This path-breaking film traces the tragic story of a simple village farmer, Shambhu, who needs to protect his two bighas of land from the unscrupulous zamindar who in league with city speculators wishes to cheat Shambhu of his ancestral property. In order to save his land Shambhu has to repay a large debt to the zamindar. To earn this substantial amount of money in a short time, Shambhu along with his son Kanhaiya goes to the city (Kolkata). There, Shambhu becomes a rikshaw puller. Facing numerous hardships and many miseries Shambhu does manage to collect the money and return to his village only to find that a factory has already been built on his land.
The Bengali Film Director Ritwik Ghatak made a number of films, including Meghe Dhaka Tara(1960), Komal Gandhar (1961) and Subarnarekha(1962) in which he addressed the tragedy of partition and expressed his deep distress at and rejection of this unacceptable political imposition. His powerful films deal with the society and social, economic and cultural pressures the individuals and institutions face in changed and insecure situations.
Right through the decades of the sixties and the seventies, Indian cinema, grew by leaps and bounds. With 739 films produced in 1980 as against 318 films in 1960, cinema became the main source of entertainment and mainstream film maker, of Hindi cinema as well as, regional cinema kept experimenting with formulas for making box office hits. Hindi films from Mumbai, Tamil and Telegu films from Chennai and Bengali films from Kolkata had a well-established distribution and marketing network and easily found their producers and financiers. But these films addressed the market demands and were made mainly for profits. It was obvious that cinema was an immensely popular medium of entertainment that reached out to large sections of the society across the country, and the Indian Government felt that the medium could be used to promote and project Indian art and culture artistically. With such an objective the government established the Film Finance Corporation (FFC) in 1960 to support talented filmmakers. 
No comments:
Post a Comment