Mass Media and Communication

CINEMA

The origin of film is very debatable; some say it was the invention of the first magic lantern (a simple image projection device you will learn about later) while others belie e film started from the ancient puppet shows held in Rome and Asia. The list of film's possible origins goes on and on, but we know that without science, motion pictures would not be in existence. In fact, cinema is one of the seven arts that completely rely on science. In order to make a movie, you need to have a sufficient light source to capture and display the image. Without the study of light, movie making would probably not happen. It was a scientist named Athanathius Kircher who came up with the idea of projecting hand drawn images in the mid17th century. After the invention of the first magic lantern, lanternists such as Robert Barker travelled the world, enchanting the lives of many people with his "magic" ability of making images come to life. Who knew this would lead to the first movie ever made?

In October 1917, Hiralal Sen was sick, bankrupt and just a few days away from death when he received some cruel news. His brother's warehouse was on fire and, as it burned, Sen's career as a film-maker went up in flames. The warehouse contained the entire stock of the Royal Bioscope Company, the Sen brothers' firm, which showed and produced films in the Kolkata area in the early years of the 20^th century. The blaze destroyed Sen's films, and with them much of the proof of India's early cinema history.

The centenary celebrations suggest that Indian film production began in 1913, but that is far from the truth. "The history of Indian cinema before 1913 is a fragmentary one, but it is no less interesting for that," says Luke McKernan, moving image curator at the British Library. "It is still not fully understood, and too much overlooked." We can't watch these films today – in fact, estimates suggest that 99% of Indian silen are lost. But what we do know is that the history of Indian cinema has a little-known prequel.

Movies first came to Mumbai on 7 July 1896. The Lumière brothers sent a man named Marius Sestier to screen their short films to a mostly British audience at the swanky Watson hotel. Sen was not there – he would see the cinema two years later in Kolkata. But local photographer Harishchandra Sakharam Bhatavdekar (popularly known as Save Dada) was at one of those first Mumbai shows – and he was promptly moved to order a camera of his own from the UK.Bhatavdekar's first movie, and the first by an Indian film-maker, was shot in 1899 – he captured a wrestling match in Mumbai's Hanging Gardens. The reel had to be shipped back to the UK for processing, but Bhatavdekar's career in the motion-picture business, and Indian film production itself, had begun. By the time The Wrestlers returned to Mumbai ready for exhibition, he had bought a projector and was screening foreign-made films. He supplemented his imports with the films he made himself. When maths scholar RP Paranjpe returned to India from Cambridge, Bhatavdekar captured the moment – and this may well be the first Indian news footage. Bhatavdekar continued to make films until the mid-1900s, when he made a sideways move and bought the Gaiety Theatre in Mumbai – which he ran successfully, and lucratively, until his death.

Sen's career ran in the opposite direction. When he began showing imported films in theatre intervals, the local paper raved: "This is a thousand times better than the live circuses performed by real persons. Moreover it is not very costly … Everybody should view this strange phenomenon." Soon he added his own titles, shooting play scenes, from The Flower of Persia to Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. After 1904, he specialised in news footage, but as time went on, he found it harder to compete with imported films – eventually closing the business and selling all his equipment.

One of those competitors was Jamshedji Madan, a former theatre impresario whose Elphinstone Bioscope Company made, distributed and exhibited films. Madan made a lot of money out of the movies, acquiring the rights to show films from overseas studios, and in 1907 establishing India's first purpose-built cinema, the Elphinstone Picture 2/5/2014 The birth of India's film industry: how the movies came to Mumbai Palace in Kolkata.

Not just foreign films, but foreign film-makers came to India, shooting mostly documentary footage, which was then shown globally. McKernan picks out the British film director Charles Urban ("both a colonialist film-maker and one who saw beyond colonialism"), whose equipment was often used by native film-makers, and who sent cameramen to the region throughout the early film period. Some of the films he shot were lavish Kinemacolor numbers – notably With Our King and Queen Through India, a record of the royal visit to the 1911 Delhi durbar (celebrating King George V's coronation), which became an international box-office hit.

We know that all this film-making and film-watching was going onin the 1900s and 1910s, but if the movies are lost, what's therelevance? "It would be hard to explain how the Mumbai industry tookoff so fast in the 1920s without taking into account the 'cinema habit'of the previous two decades," says Kaushik Bhaumik, deputy director of the Cinefan film festival in Osian. "The imported films seen during this period provided Indians with a lot of experience of cinema that was crucial to the film production that followed." In fact, it was at a screening of an imported film that stage magician and photographer Dadasaheb Phalke had the Indian film industry's Eureka moment. Phalke was watching a lavish film based on the Christian bible: "While the life of Christ was rolling before my eyes I was mentally visualising the gods Shri Krishnu, Shri Ramchandra, their Gokul and Ayodhya," the "father of Indian cinema" later wrote. "Could we, the sons of India, ever be able to see Indian images on the screen?"

Raja Harishchandra, Phalke's 1913 film, is the result – and it's this that the centenary celebrates as the first Indian film. But in order to produce a story of Hindu gods with the same production values as a foreign movie, Phalke had to go far from home. First he travelled to London, to learn more (from both the English film director Cecil Hepworth and the editor of trade magazine the Bioscope) and buy equipment. On his return, he set up a studio in a borrowed bungalow and assembled a cast and crew. His first movie was less than epic in scale, a time-lapse movie of a pea-plant growing, but it was a useful experiment. Inspired by the films of the French conjuror-turneddirector George Méliès, Phalke used camera trickery to animate his 2/5/2014 The birth of India's film industry: how the movies came to Mumbai mythological feature debut: the stop-motion work he learned on the pea-plant film, in-camera editing and multiple exposures.

Raja Harishchandra premiered on 9 May 1913, and notwithstanding Dadsaheb Torne's stagebound 40-minutes Shree Pundalik from 1912, and the reels and reels shot by Sen, Bhatavdekar and peers, it was marketed as: "First film of Indian manufacture. Specially prepared at enormous cost … Sure to appeal to our Hindu patrons." The boisterous Marathi Phalke biopic Harishchandrachi Factory (2009) has the film-maker admonished by a relative: "We're under British rule, and he's playing with their toys" – but despite the foreign help and foreign influence, Raja Harishchandra was presented and largely accepted as home-made, Indian "swadeshi" fare – Phalke even perforated and printed the film himself. A century later, it is still regarded as the foundation of the national film industry. It's the "celebration of an idea, and of a certainty", according to McKernan, "like saying The Birth of a Nation was the first American film."

We know Raja Harishchandra wasn't the breakthrough moment it is claimed to be, but we may never know for certain who the true trailblazers of Indian cinema were, as records and newspaper reports are hard to come by: "The Anglo press of the colonial period could not have bothered recording the deeds of Indian film-makers tramping the countryside," says Bhaumik. "The vernacular press did not notice cinema because it was too preoccupied with politics." In fact, Bhaumik questions whether we would remember Sen and his lost films had he not been involved with filming the Durbars in 1903 and 1911 – events that were also covered by western film-makers. "I would be sceptical of bestowing Sen with any extraordinary status of pioneership."

Phalke, at least, was canny enough to build on his early success, producing popular films until the sound era. In 1917, the year that Sen's hoard of films went up in smoke, a director called Rustomji Dhotiwala shot a remake of Raja Harishchandra for Madan's Elphinstone Bioscope company. Many historians believe that this is the version that survives, rather than Phalke's – so searching for India's first movie may very well be chasing a ghost.

Types of Films:

1. Commercial cinema: It primarily aims at providing entertainment to the people.it includes the ingredients of popular cinema-star high budget, abundance of music, song and dance. It mostly resorts to phantasy to provide entertainment to people. For example, films like Vaqt, Sholay, Muqhddar Ka Sikandar are few example of such films.

2. Art cinema: It is more realistic and relevant in the needs of people and society. This form is not very popular. It is also called ‘parallel cinema’ ‘alternative cinema’ or ‘New main stream of commercial cinema’. Their dominant characteristic were their social concern, purposefulness, realism, narrative style, exclusion of unrelated songs, dances and fights and other familiar devices of commercial package. Their acceptance by the intelligent and cultivated audience in the country and the high praise which some of the really good new trend films won abroad brought a much needed self-confidence to adventurous or innovative film makers. National corporation provides institutional aid for the production of these films. Satyajit Ray, Shyam Benegal, Govind Nihalani, Mrinal Sen, are some of the known art cinema proponents. However, or distributer. Many of them remain at award winning level only and reach the masses due to these difficulties. With the popularity of television, some of such  films are telecast on television. Chakra, Ankur, Nishant, Ardha, Satya, Damul some of the example of art cinema.

3. Feature Films: Feature film means fictionalised film exceeding, 200 metres in length in 36mn or corresponding length in other gauge or on video. Feature film means full length cinematography film produced wholly or partly in India with a format and a story woven around a number of characters where the plot is animation or cartoon depiction and does not include an advertisement film. Feature films are about a story enacted by a people cast and to convey a moral but firstly to entertain to audience. They continue to be most popular form of entertainment. Feature films could be commercial or art films. These are produced for mass information and entertainment. These films create cultural waves and to certain modify behaviour. These films have the elements like comedy, drama, suspense, science, fiction, detective or horror.

4. Documentary   Films: Documentary dramatizes an idea or theme uses the factual material in order to dramatize its idea, it tells its simple story in terms of beings and human interests. Sometimes can be exhibited in school, village and labour areas through mobile vans so that a number of children can take advantages of these this film.

As expressed by Goswami “Making film for children is a hard task than making films for adults. The producer has to take great care at every step. Only the best should be shown to children. Their whole can be adversely affected if they see the wrong films in the formative state of their mental development.”

·        Impact of films:

In the last fifty years cinema has become not only a serious art form a field of study by itself. Continuous advancement in film technology and high level of conceptualization of the film take viewer to the world outside his day to day world providing entertainment. This has made cinema a popular medium of masses.

Indian educations and sociologist have shown a surprising lack of interest in the film as an education force and social challenge. Hardly an academic. Systematic scientific studies have been undertaken on the social and psychological impact of the films in India.

There is no data available on the systematic use of the documentary and the feature film in social education programmes in India. However, experience in Canada, USA, and USSR indicate the documentary and film have contributed to bringing about a better social order and in building up a national community having common thing about nation.

Many social scientists have shared their informal experiences and observation regarding the impact that films have created.

According to Bhola, “Cinema being a composite art has been responsible for popularizing music, dance, and painting. Literature among the common people and in India to a very large event for the popularization of Hindi speaking south of India.

·        Limitations:

   The main limitation of films is its fixed pace. The move as a fixed pace. Some viewers are likely to fall behind. If they are the unable to keep pace with the pace of the film. Since films are mostly the dramatized presentation. There the chances of sophisticated treatment or exaggerated version of a situation or issue. For example if ad adolescent has seen a film with generation gap.Theme. It is likely that he will take this melodrama in literary sense and feel that he also has to face to face many problems due to generation gap in his relationship with his parents and teacher.

It is very difficult to define the limits of what is ‘controversy’ in films. For, example the film ‘Andhi’ was banned during the emergency period in India. It was labelled as controversial film. When released people did not find anything controversial on objectionable in the film.

The commercial films are made with the audience’s preference in mind but there is hardly any feedback mechanism.

The production of film or a replication of a film are costly and require huge amount of finances highly sophisticated equipment for production as well as projection.

Film production also requires trained personnel such as Director, Photographer, Sound effects, Musician editor etc. once the film production is complete; it is very expensive to make any changes in the film.

Each film require individual distribution network which requires investment of large amount of money and time.