Entry #1:

Screening: Kaliya Mardan (1919) by D.G. Phalke

Reading: “Is There an Indian Way of Filmmaking?” by Philip Lutgendorf

The article debates the essential characteristics that define filmmaking in Indian.

As the author titled is work, he reflects on the question of identity throughout motion

picture making by the means of the question in the title asked by poet A.K. Ramanujan

in the essay collection titled “India Through Hindu Categories”. Philip Lutgendorf is

claiming that India is in fact a very large country with multiple subcultures with a

sundry population; which makes it very difficult to categorize the country. His analysis

is explained through four main approaches to dissect properly the aspects of Indian

filmmaking: cultural-historical, technological, mythic and psychological and finally

political-economic.

Lutgendorf quotes Rosie Thomas by noting her observation upon films: “films

are in no sense a simple reflection of the wider society, but are produced by an

apparatus that has its own momentum and logic” (230). He explains how Thomas had

emphasized the power of cinematic conventions, regardless of their origin, in order to

quickly spread and be used to educate not only the audience but also the producers in

the ruling of what films should look like. The conclusion came to be, that the reason

why filmmakers keep making commercial films is to meet the audience’s expectations,

hence Thomas asserts that the true influence behind Indian popular cinema is in fact

Indian popular cinema.

Lutgendorf talks about mythology and tackles a very precise aspect that is the

“gaze”. A deity’s (or actor) act of seeing is solely sensed by the seer, which is the

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camera’s point of view, but when the shot-reverse-shot was incorporated in films, film

viewers were able to comprehend both positions in the darçanic act. In Kaliya Mardan,

there was a shot in which a frontal tableau of the child Krishna dancing on a submissive

serpent shows to Krishna’s eye-view of the assembled crowd of worshipers, gazing at

him in reverential admiration. This technique became often used in mythological films

but its omnipresence should not shade-away its religious significance. By having the

camera inviting its viewers to gaze through the deity’s eyes, intensifies the experience

of the mutuality of darçan.

D.G. Phalke had based his early films on Hindu legends, and his use of cinema

to maintain the concept of Swadeshi. Krishna defeating Kaliya, the snake god, might

have been seen as a commentary on the political situation in India at that time. By

understanding the historical context within the film, we can assert that there was in fact

a comparison made of the concept of evil, represented by Kaliya illustrating the British

Colonial rule.

One may also claims that modern Indian films are a good reminder of Kaliya

Mardan and how Indian filmmaking has a timeless feature. The use of acquainted themes,

such as Hindu mythology to comment on sensitive social and political situation is an

example of a timeless feature in Indian filmmaking. Thus, God in the image of man is an

interpretation of mythology used in this film, which is still remaining in contemporary

productions.

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Entry #2:
Screening: Mother India (1957) by Mehboob Khan
Reading: “Sanctity and Scandal: The Mythologization of Mother India” by Rosie
Thomas

The self-claimed central thesis of “Sanctity and Scandal” is that Mother India

would be effectively and efficiently perceived as an arena within which a number of

discourses around female chastity, modern nationalism, but also as far as morality

intersect and feed on each other, with significant political effects. The film portrays a

specific approach to femininity and traditions insecurely tackled in the narrative.

Thomas talks about two very distinct vision of the woman, that is, the sexual and the

traditional. Thomas argues that Mehboob’s film Mother India challenges the

conventions of popular Indian cinema and is now perceived as a mythological piece as

an all-time classic, having firm dialogue hidden in the popular preconscious. The

motion picture was said to be constructed within the formal conventions of Hindi

cinema, which is the reason why we are looking at not a steady linear narrative since it

has multiple instances of climaxes that are juxtaposed within the film through humor,

spectacle and powerful songs. Thus, Mother India illustrates aesthetics and nature of

capturing a developing nation.

Furthermore, Indian cinema expresses cinematic adaptations of traditional

ideological structures of Indian morality as written in the Hindu mythology. Narrowly

linked to India’s independence, the Indian cinema came off as merely main pieces of

collective national identity construction, which is clearly what can be understood by

watching Mother India. This film celebrates the freedom by using the discourse of

‘nationhood as womanhood’.

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 Consequently, Radha is an epitome of Hindu womanhood—a wife and mother

who represents both the divine female and the country of India. Her name bares a

religious symbolism, where in Hindu mythology, Radha is the lover of Krishna, who

leaves her and she longs for his return. The metaphor is present in Mother India, since

Radha devoted the rest of her life to her absent husband. In the film, we would expect

Radha to fulfill the expectations of what one may think of a traditional mother, yet she

is a killer-a character that is personified by Hindu goddesses; she kills her own son

because she was convinced morally that she had to do so. Yet, we must say that Radha

risks the starvation of her two sons, rather than giving herself to a moneylender. That is

the perfect example that Radha is characterized as a woman first and then a mother,

which covers the discourse of womanhood not being overshadowed by the role of a

mother. This is the last thought she conveyed to her son Birju before she killed him.

Marxist themes are abounded in the film; first we can understand it through the

glorification of the worker, also with the individual sacrifice for the good of the village

(in Marxism it would be for the good of the collective), and the struggle of the

everyday-person against the evil of capitalism (in this film symbolized by the

moneylender). The are also other iconic and symbolic images of womanhood, such as

Radha carrying a plow that is meant to be carried by an ox and Radha standing neck-

deep in flood waters lifting her young children over her head on a pallet.

It is noteworthy to mention that the film was shot in brown and orange tones,

which highlights the splendor of the rural Indian landscape and bring to life the abrasive

method of working the soil.

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Entry #3:
Screening: Deewar (1975) by Yash Chopra
Reading: “Bollywood Cinema: Temples of Desires” by Vijay Mishra

Taking upon postcolonial film theory, Mishra discusses Indian cinema as an

exploit to cut across the country’s numerous communities and achieve a pan-Indian

culture. He studies films from Bombay in light of the national culture and aesthetics

tendencies. This chapter focuses on the actor’s text and the cultural influence the acting

methods underline. He talks about two distinct ways of acting, the first one being

through redundant gestures “where an actor would repeat insistently, illogically and

passionately a single gesture” (125). This can be thought of as in film sound theory

when talking about a diegetic sound, which bring attention to itself; in this case the

purpose of this method of acting as the same motif. The second way involves the

collaboration of the spectators with the actors, which might be considered self-reflexive

since it gives an intimate meaning of the play, because ultimately the performance said

something to the spectators about themselves. Mishra notes that even though cinema is

not quite similar to plays, the viewers screen films with the pre-cinematic experience in

mind.

Mishra claimed that Amitabh Bachchan’s supremacy in Indian popular cinema,

allowed him to maintain the status of a star, a high social significance and a highly

probable political prominence due to his power of cinema discourse. The author states

that “while fanzines can be quickly dismissed as ephemera,” he concludes that it is an

authentic claim conceived upon the formation of a star. By reaching this stardom, actors

like Bachchan can afford to deconstruct the text the way they please and still be

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acclaimed by the general public as the original text, because the actor himself is

perceived as a parallel text. In this reading, Mishra illustrates the very complex way in

which the star system in Bombay Cinema is manipulated and he also captures the

dynamics of the “spectorial desire” within the cinematic construction in the 1970s and

1980s. Since film and politics in India go hand by hand, it is worthwhile to examine the

politics in Deewar, not only by limiting ourselves to the film text alone, but also

understand the actor within this text and within the film industry as well. There is a

certain parallel text that must be understood such as Mishra was stating in his article.

The same goes to Deewar, by having the presence of an eminent star, Amitabh

Bachchan, in the film because he is an actor-turned-politician.

Vijay Mishra explained the dialogue from Deewar, which he said that it coined

two popular analytical terms for the dialogic situation: “what a scene!” and “what a way

with dialogues!”. The film is crafted psychologically around the portray of the damaged

Vijay, because of his father’s betrayal deed. Vijay is the perfect example of an anti-

hero, an ingenious and honorable fighter who enters the underworld solely to provide

for his family. The tattoo is understood to be his humiliation but also his motivation as

he chooses a destructive path. This is the aspect that makes Vijay the quintessential

‘angry-young-man’ present in Hindi films. The film only has three songs, which is

extremely unusual for a Hindi film, but each song presented is strictly to heighten the

intensity of the moment. Finally, there is also a religious-mythic reading of the text: a

moral of good and evil; when young Vijay refuses to enter the temple sitting on stairs

and a elliptical cut to the adult Vijay sitting at the place. It signifies the right and wrong

decision: entering the temple to avoid going to hell.

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Entry #4:

Screening: DevD (2009) by Anurag Kashyap

Reading: “Producing Bollywood: Inside the Contemporary Hindi Film Industry” by
Tejaswini Ganti

Ganti’s piece frames the structural changes undergoing within the film industry and

the rising of multiplex theatres, which have engendered new means of success that allowed

filmmakers to limit their ‘imagined audience’, yet still make profit from their films. He

used the term ‘imagined audience’ to distinguish between filmmakers’ broad construction

of the vast film-going audience incorporating the social and historical complexity viewers

strive to watch. He argues about the radical transformation in audience imaginaries that he

observed between 1996 and the year 2000. Furthermore, he explored the impact that

multiplexes have had on filmmaker’s relationship with their audience and the approach to

commercial success.

DevD supports Ganti’s theory of the changing audience, because the film has an

‘avant-gardist’ approach widely inspired by the Indian diasporas to Occidental countries. It

is undoubtedly a male centric film. Paro, Dev’s longtime love, is portrayed as an object of

sexual desires. A subtle example from the film is when Paro is walking a mattress towards

a field, eagerly wanting to make love with Dev. This seemed to frighten Dev, who has other

notions of how women should behave. The film tackles subjects like sex, alcohol and

drugs, which exemplifies the notion of the audience shift made after the year 2000, with the

emergence of commercial films. The movie is very contradictory at times; where the gender

roles are completely the opposite from their classical representations in Indian cinema. The

main difference between the classical imagery of women and how modern sexual

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mainstream women are depicted are formed throughout the development of the two

main female characters, Paro and Chanda. They are expressing a natural sexual desire in

their subtext, without being explicitly depicted within the classical contrast that is

always being made in Indian films: ‘good and evil’. Instead, they are depicted as strong

and modern women, out of the classical context of Indian mainstream cinema.

Nevertheless, some primitive aspects were still present in the film; Chanda and Paro

were punished in the story for their sexual desires; Paro who showed her sexual desired

to Dev ended up in a doomed marriage and Chanda who also shower sexual desires to

her boyfriend was rejected by the society and ended up becoming a prostitute. Shying

away from the conventional Bollywood stories, Dev D is followed from the point of

view of the female characters. It can be related to the notion of the ‘gaze’ from a

previous reading, because as we are watching the film, we are somewhat compelled to

evoke a sense of sympathy and empathy towards the character. It was as though the

filmmaker was making us peek into the representation of women and their sexuality in a

critical manner in the Indian society