Parallel Cinema

The Indian New Wave, commonly known in India as Art Cinema or Parallel Cinema as an alternative to
the mainstream commercial cinema, is a specific movement in Indian cinema, known for its serious
content, realism and naturalism, with a keen eye on the sociopolitical climate of the times. This
movement is distinct from mainstream Bollywood cinema and began around the same time as the
French New Wave and Japanese New Wave. The movement was initially led by Bengali cinema (which
has produced internationally acclaimed filmmakers such as Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen, Ritwik Ghatak and
others) and then gained prominence in the other film industries of India.

Origins

Realism in Indian cinema dates back to the 1920s and 1930s. One of the earliest examples was V.
Shantaram's 1925 silent film classic Sawkari Pash (Indian Shylock), about a poor peasant (portrayed by
Shantaram) who "loses his land to a greedy moneylender and is forced to migrate to the city to become
a mill worker. Acclaimed as a realistic breakthrough, its shot of a howling dog near a hut, has become a
milestone in the march of Indian cinema." The 1937 Shantaram film Duniya Na Mane (The Unaccepted)
also critiqued the treatment of women in Indian society.[1]

Early years

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, Khwaja Ahmad Abbas, Chetan Anand, Guru Dutt
and V. Shantaram. This period is considered part of the 'Golden Age' of Indian cinema.[2][3][4] This
cinema borrowed heavily from the Indian literature of the times, hence became an important study of
the contemporary Indian society, and is now used by scholars and historians alike to map the changing
demographics the and socio-economic as well political temperament of the Indian populace. Right from
its inception, Indian cinema has had people who wanted to and did use the medium for more than
entertainment. They used it to highlight prevalent issues and sometimes to throw open new issues for
the public. An early example was Chetan Anand's Neecha Nagar (1946), a social realist film that won the
Grand Prize at the first Cannes Film Festival.[5] Since then, Indian independent films were frequently in
competition for the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, with
some of them winning major prizes at the festival.

During the 1950s and the 1960s, intellectual filmmakers and story writers became frustrated with
musical films. To counter this, they created a genre of films which depicted reality from an artful
perspective. Most films made during this period were funded by state governments to promote an
authentic art genre from the Indian film fraternity. The most famous Indian "neo-realist" was the Bengali
film director Satyajit Ray, followed by Shyam Benegal, Mrinal Sen, Adoor Gopalakrishnan and Girish
Kasaravalli. Ray's most famous films were Pather Panchali (1955), Aparajito (1956) and The World of Apu
(1959), which formed The Apu Trilogy. Produced on a shoestring budget of Rs. 150,000 ($3000),[6][7]
the three films won major prizes at the Cannes, Berlin and Venice Film Festivals, and are today
frequently listed among the greatest films of all time.[8][9][10][11]

Certain art films have also garnered commercial success, in an industry known for its surrealism or
'fantastical' movies, and successfully combined features of both art and commercial cinema. An early
example of this was Bimal Roy's Do Bigha Zamin (1953), which was both a commercial and critical
success. The film won the International Prize at the 1954 Cannes Film Festival and paved the way for the
Indian New Wave.[12][13][14] Hrishikesh Mukherjee, one of Hindi cinema's most successful filmmakers,
was named the pioneer of 'middle cinema', and was renowned for making films that reflected the
changing middle-class ethos. According to Encyclopædia Britannica, Mukherjee "carved a middle path
between the extravagance of mainstream cinema and the stark relism of art cinema".[15] Another
filmmaker to integrate art and commercial cinema was Guru Dutt, whose film Pyaasa (1957) featured in
Time magazine's "All-TIME" 100 best movies list.[16]

In the 1960s, the Indian government began financing independent art films based on Indian themes.
Many of the directors were graduates of the FTII (Film and Television Institute of India), in Pune. The
Bengali film director Ritwik Ghatak was a professor at the institute and a well-known director. Unlike
Ray, however, Ghatak did not gain international fame during his lifetime. For example, Ghatak's Nagarik
(1952) was perhaps the earliest example of a Bengali art film, preceding Ray's Pather Panchali by three
years, but was not released until after his death in 1977.[17][18] His first commercial release Ajantrik
(1958) was also one of the earliest films to portray an inanimate object, in this case an automobile, as a
character in the story, many years before the Herbie films.[19] The protagonist of Ajantrik, Bimal, can
also be seen as an influence on the cynical cab driver Narasingh (played by Soumitra Chatterjee) in
Satyajit Ray's Abhijan (1962).[20]

Growth

During the 1970s and the 1980s, parallel cinema entered into the limelight of Hindi cinema to a much
wider extent. This was led by such directors as Gulzar, Shyam Benegal and Saeed Akhtar Mirza, and later
on Mahesh Bhatt and Govind Nihalani, becoming the main directors of this period's Indian art cinema.
Benegal's directorial debut, Ankur (Seeding, 1974) was a major critical success, and was followed by
numerous works that created another field in the movement. These filmmakers tried to promote
realism in their own different styles, though many of them often accepted certain conventions of
popular cinema.[21] Parallel cinema of this time gave careers to a whole new breed of young actors,
including Shabana Azmi, Smita Patil, Amol Palekar, Om Puri, Naseeruddin Shah, Kulbhushan Kharbanda,
Pankaj Kapoor, and even actors from commercial cinema like Rekha and Hema Malini ventured into art
cinema.

Adoor Gopalakrishnan extended the Indian New Wave to Malayalam cinema with his film Swayamvaram
in 1972. Long after the Golden Age of Indian cinema, Malayalam cinema experienced its own 'Golden
Age' in the 1980s and early 1990s. Some of the most acclaimed Indian filmmakers at the time were from
the Malayalam industry, including Adoor Gopalakrishnan, G. Aravindan, Padmarajan, John Abraham
(director), T. V. Chandran and Shaji N. Karun.[22] Gopalakrishnan, who is often considered to be Satyajit
Ray's spiritual heir,[23] directed some of his most acclaimed films during this period, including
Elippathayam (1981) which won the Sutherland Trophy at the London Film Festival, as well as Mathilukal
(1989) which won major prizes at the Venice Film Festival.[24] Shaji N. Karun's debut film Piravi (1989)
won the Camera d'Or at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival, while his second film Swaham (1994) was in
competition for the Palme d'Or at the 1994 Cannes Film Festival.[25] His third film Vanaprastham (1999)
was also selected to Cannes Film Festival, making him the only Indian film maker who could take
consecutively three films to Cannes.

Girish Kasaravalli, Girish Karnad and B. V. Karanth led the way for parallel cinema in the Kannada film
industry, while Mani Ratnam has done the same for Tamil cinema.

Decline

By the early 1990s, the rising costs involved in film production and the commercialization of the films
had a negative impact on the art films. The fact that investment returns cannot be guaranteed made art
films less popular amongst filmmakers. Underworld financing, political and economic turmoil, television
and piracy proved to be fatal threat to parallel cinema, as it declined.

Resurgence

Konkona Sen Sharma and Rahul Bose, in Aparna Sen's Mr. and Mrs. Iyer (2002).

The term "parallel cinema" has started being applied to off-beat films produced in Bollywood, where art
films have begun experiencing a resurgence. This led to the emergence of a distinct genre known as
Mumbai noir,[26] urban films reflecting social problems in the city of Mumbai.[27]

Other modern examples of art films produced in Bollywood which are classified as part of the parallel
cinema genre include Mani Ratnam's Dil Se.. (1998) and Yuva (2004), Nagesh Kukunoor's 3 Deewarein
(2003) and Dor (2006), Sudhir Mishra's Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi (2005), Jahnu Barua's Maine Gandhi Ko
Nahin Mara (2005), Pan Nalin's Valley of Flowers (2006), Nandita Das' Firaaq (2008), Onir's My Brother…
Nikhil (2005) and Bas Ek Pal (2006), Anurag Kashyap's Dev.D (2009) and Gulaal (2009) Piyush Jha's
Sikandar (2009) and Vikramaditya Motwane's Udaan (2009).

Independent films spoken in Indian English are also occasionally produced; examples include Revathi's
Mitr, My Friend (2002), Aparna Sen's Mr. and Mrs. Iyer (2002) and 15 Park Avenue (2006), Anant Balani's
Joggers' Park (2003), Piyush Jha's King of Bollywood (2004), Homi Adajania's Being Cyrus (2006),
Rituparno Ghosh's The Last Lear (2007) and Sooni Taraporevala's Little Zizou (2009).

Other Indian art film directors active today include Mrinal Sen, Buddhadeb Dasgupta, Aparna Sen,
Gautam Ghose, Sandip Ray (Satyajit Ray's son) and Rituparno Ghosh in Bengali cinema; Adoor
Gopalakrishnan, Shaji N. Karun and T. V. Chandran in Malayalam cinema; Kumar Shahani, Ketan Mehta,
Govind Nihalani and Shyam Benegal[28] and Deepa Mehta in Hindi cinema; Mani Ratnam and Bala in
Tamil cinema.