'''New Indian Cinema'''


Promotional label for a sector of state
sponsored film-making said to have originated
either with Mrinal Sen’s Bhuvan Shome
(1969) or Mani Kaul’s Uski Roti (1969).
Associated in the late 60s/early 70s with
financial support from the FFC (see NFDC),
making it the first major result of governmental
support for feature-film production outside the
industrial mainstream. Among its beneficiaries
were FTII graduates like Kumar Shahani,
Mani Kaul, Saeed Mirza and Ketan Mehta. It
also generated technicians who pioneered
aesthetic and technological innovations which
had a substantial impact on the technical
standards of the film industry itself: the
camerawork of K.K. Mahajan in Hindi, Venu in
Malayalam and Ramchandra in Kannada
cinemas, the sound recording of Kuldeep Sud
and later Hitendra Ghosh and P.C.
Padmanabhan. Described by the popular press
as a ‘new wave’ in a facile comparison with the
French nouvelle vague, prompting Satyajit
Ray to issue a somewhat dismissive response
to the sector, ‘An Indian New Wave?’ (1971: cf.
Ray, 1976). What shaped the new cinema most
decisively was the cultural and political
dynamic sparked by the mainstream industry’s
massive opposition to it. While attacking
‘financially unviable’ films, the industry also
sought to exploit its aura of cultural value for
its own purposes (cf. B.R. Ishara). The films
that articulated an ‘official’ agenda were
Pattabhi Rama Reddy’s Samskara (1970)
and Shyam Benegal’s Ankur (1973). Both,
like Bhuvan Shome and M.S. Sathyu’s Garam
Hawa (1973), were low-budget box-office
successes. Samskara gave a new dimension to
the predominantly literary movements in
Kannada (see Navya Movement) and
encouraged the notion of ‘regional realism’,
claiming Satyajit Ray as its major progenitor (a
role Ray was happy to play) although
Tendulkar’s theatre work offered a more
credible source. This development was
extended into the Malayalam cinema by Adoor
Gopalakrishnan and Aravindan. In its later,
post-Benegal phase, New Indian Cinema often
drew on advertising capital and aesthetics for
art-house film-making, legitimating a new
definition enshrined in e.g. the parliamentary
committee’s instructions, during the
Emergency, to the FFC to grant loans on the
following criteria: ‘1. Human interest in the
story; 2. Indianness in theme and approach; 3.
Characters with whom the audience can
identify; 4. Dramatic content and 5.
Background and capability of the applicant’
(Committee On Public Undertakings Report,
1976). This ideology became official cultural
policy in the 7th Five-Year Plan and had a
decisive impact on Doordarshan as well as
shaping the NFDC’s and the Directorate of Film
Festivals’ institutional priorities.

[[Glossary]]