Art form of Film
Film is a term that encompasses individual motion pictures, the field of film as an art form, and the motion picture industry. Films are produced by recording images from the world with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques/ special effects.
Films are cultural artifacts created by specific society, which reflect those cultures, and, in turn, affect them. Film is considered to be an important art form, a source of popular entertainment and a powerful method for educating — citizens. The visual elements of cinema give motion pictures a universal power of communication. Some films have become popular worldwide attractions by using special effects, animation, dubbing, rerecording, and dialogues.
Traditional films are made up of a series of individual images called frames. When these images are shown rapidly in succession, a viewer has the illusion that motion is occurring. The viewer cannot see the flickering between frames due to an effect known as Persistence of vision, whereby the eye retains a visual image for a fraction of a second after the source has been removed. Viewers perceive motion due to a psychological effect called beta movement.
The origin of the name "film" comes from the fact that Photographic film had historically been the primary source for recording and displaying motion pictures. Many other terms exist for an individual motion picture, including picture, picture show, photo-play, flick, and most commonly, movie. Additional terms for the field in general include the big screen, the silver screen, the cinema, and the movies.
The History of Film
Development of Film
The film process may first have been created by Louis Le prince, working in New york who patented his process for "the successive production... of objects in motion... by means of a projector in 1886. But while travelling to France to demonstrate his process in 1892 he vanished.
The first commercially developed process was by Thomas Alva Edison's employee WKL Dickson, who first demonstrated his Kinetoscope in March 1891. The first public display of this process took place on 1891 to members of the National federation of women's clubs. Dickinson left Edison Co. in 1895 and Edison himself claimed all credit for the process. People were paying to view Kinetoscope films by April 1894. The Kinetoscope was a powerful viewing experience but a private one, meant for an individual or perhaps a family.
It was in America that people were first induced to pay to watch -- in May 1895 in a store on Broadway. In Europe it was not until November 1895 in Berlin that a public 'film' was shown.
The quality of the films shown in New York and Berlin was extremely poor and used processes that had no lasting impact on film technology. The 'true' debut of the motion picture is therefore usually dated to December 1895 in Paris, where at the Grand Cafe in Boulevard des capucines the Lumiere brothers had their first paying audience.
Color and Sound
Commercially successful color process dates from 1906 when George Albert Smith produced a two-color system using panchromatic stock in Brighton for Charles Urban Trading Co. as Kinemacolor.
The first public presentation was not until February 1909 in London, when a series of twenty short films by the Natural Colour Kinematograph Company was shown at the Palace Theatre in Shaftesbury Avenue. However there were a number of problems with Kinemacolor and colour stock cannot be regarded as a commercial reality until 1932 with the Technicolor three-colour process.
Synchronized sound was first demonstrated in 1900 at the Paris exposition with a separate sound-on-disc system. Sound-on-film was first patented in 1906 by Eugene Lauste in London, although the system was not really successful until 1910 with the words "J'entends très bien maintenant".
A completed projector project was stymied by the outbreak of war and it was not until September 1922 that the process was demonstrated to an invited audience in Berlin. Yet again it was in New York in April 1923 that people first paid.
The first (reasonably) permanent cinema was the Vitascope Hall in New orleans. It opened in June 1896. Admission was 10 cents. The first important purpose-built cinema was the Gaumont Film company's Gaumont-Palace in Paris, which opened in 1910 and could seat 5,000 people. There are many early cinemas still in use in the UK, including the Electric Palace in Harwich.
Soon, the French concept of movies being shown in theaters became the dominant model, and entrepreneurs scurried to build impressive movie houses all across North America and Europe.
The shift that occurred in the 1980s from seeing movies in a theater to watching videos on a VCR, is a move quite close to the original idea of Thomas Edison. In the early part of that decade, the movie studios tried legal action to ban home ownership of VCRs as a violation of copyright which proved unsuccessful. However, that proved most fortituous as the sale and rental of their films on home video became a significant source of revenue for the film companies.
Film is now (2001) in the process of making another transition, from physical film stock to digital cinema technology, driven by the availability of low cost data storage and high-resolution digital displays.
HISTORY OF INDIAN CINEMA
The Beginning
· In 1886 the Lumiere Brothers Cinematographe unveiled six soundless short films at Bombay's Watson's Hotel.
· Soon after, Hiralal Sen and H.S. Bhatavdekar started making films in Calcutta and Bombay, respectively.
· Like Lumiere Brothers Bhatavdekar made India's first actuality films in 1899.
· Tough there were efforts at filming stage plays earlier India's first feature film Raja Harishchandra was made in 1913 by Dadasaheb Phalke who is known as the Father of Indian Cinema.
· By 1920 there was a regular industry bringing out films starting with 27 per year and reaching 207 films in 1931.
· Today India makes about 800 feature films every year.
· Alam Ara (1931) was the genesis of the talkie feature films. The film's popular Hindustani dialogues and seven songs made it a big hit which resulted in other filmmakers to raise the number of songs in their films till it reached a whooping 71 in "Indrasabha". Film songs became a Pan-Indian phenomenon.
· The most remarkable things about the birth of the sound film in India are that it came with a bang and quickly displaced the silent movies.
· The first Indian talkie Alam Ara produced by the Imperial film company and directed by Ardershir Irani was released on March 14, 1931 at the Majestic Cinema in Bombay; the talkie had brought revolutionary changes in the whole set up of the industry.
· The year 1931 marked the beginning of the talking ear in Bengal and South India.
· The first talkie films in Bengali (Jumai Shasthi), Telugu (Bhakta Prahlad) and Tamil (Kalidass) were released in the same year.
· Regional culture and craving to see-hear a film in one's own language caused the mushrooming of the regional film industries beginning with Bengali, Tamil & Telugu followed by Marathi, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Oriya, Assamese, English and several other dialects.
The Golden Era
· The post independence period saw the golden era of Indian cinema with melodious socials & melodramas.
· International recognition came with Satyajit Ray's Pather Panchali in 1955.
· Satyajit Ray is considered as one of the greatest directors of all times. He was awarded an Oscar for lifetime achievement short before his death in 1995.
· The 70's saw the birth of the parallel cinema, which promoted realistic cinema.
· At around the same time was born the long lasting trend on the angry young man pitted against the Establishment as represented by Amitabh Bachchan, the superstar of the Indian Film Industry.
· Amitabh Bachchan was virtually a one-man industry and this trend lasted till the late eighties.
· The thirties are recognized as the decade of social protests in the history of Indian Cinema.
· Three big banners-Prabhat, Bombay Talkies and New Theatres gave the lead in making serious but gripping sand entertaining films for all classes of the wide audience.
· A number of films making a strong plea against social injustice were also made in this period like V.Santharam's Duniya Na Mane, Aadmi and Padosi, Franz Osten's Achut Kanya, Damle & Fatehlal's Sant Thukaram, Mehboob's Watan, Ek hi Raasta and Aurat.
· For the first time Ardeshir Irani attempted a color picture in 1937 with Kisan Kanya.
· The decade also witnessed the release of the first talkie films in Marathi (Ayodhiyecha Raja 1932), Gujarathi (Narasinh Mehta-32), Kannada (Dhurvkumar-34); Oriya (Sita Bibaha-34); Assamese (Joymati-35); Punjabi (Sheila-35) and Malayalam(Balan-38).
· The decade during which the second world was fought and Indian independence won, was a momentous one for cinematography all over India.
· Some memorable films were produced during the forties such as Shantharam's Dr. Kotnis Ki Amar Kahani, Mehboob's Roti, Chetan Anand's Neecha Nagar, Uday Shanker's Kalpana, Abbas's Dharti Ke Lal, Sohrab Modi's Sikander, Pukar and Prithvi Vallabh, J.B.H. Wadia's Court Dancer, S.S. Vasan's Chandralekha, Vijay Bhatt's Bharat Milap and Ram Rajya, Rajkapoor's Barsaat and Aag.
Film Festival
· The first International Film Festival of India held in early 1952 at Bombay had great impact of Indian Cinema.
· The big turning point camp in 1955 with the arrival of Satyajit Ray and his classic Pather Panchali which opened up a new path leading the Indian film to the World Film Scene.
· International recognition came to it with the Cannes award for best human document followed by an unprecedented crop of foreign and national awards.
· In Hindi Cinema too, the impact of neorealism was evident in some distinguished films like Bimal Roy's Do Bigha Zamin, Devadas and Madhumati, Rajkapoor's Boot Polish, Shri-420 and Jagte Raho, V. Shantharam's Do Aankhen Barah Haath and Jhanak Jhanak Payal Baaje, Mehbood's Mother India.
· Gurudutt's Pyaasa, and Kagaz Ke Phool and B.R. Chopra's Kanoon; the first Indo-Soviet co-production Pardesi by K.A.Abbas was also made during the fifties.
· The transition to color and the consequent preference for escapist entertainment and greater reliance on stars brought about a complete change in the film industry.
· The sixties was a decade of mediocre films made mostly to please the distributors and to some extent, meet the demands of the box office. The sixties began with a bang with the release of K. Asif's Mughal-E-Azam which set a record at the box-office.
· It was followed by notable productions, which include romantic musical and melodramas of a better quality.
· Rajkapoor's Jis Desh Mein Ganga Behti Hai, Sangam, Dilip Kumar's Gunga Jamna, Gurudutt's Sahib Bibi Aur Gulam, Dev Anand's Guide; Bimal Roy's Bandini, S.Mukherji's Junglee, Sunil Dutt's Mujhe Jeene Do and the experimental Yaadein, Basu Bhatacharya's Teesri Kasam, Pramod Chakravorthy's Love in Tokyo, Ramanand Sagar's Arzoo, Sakhti Samantha's Aradhana, Hrishikesh Mukherji's Aashirwad and Anand, B.R. Chopra's Waqt, Manoj Kumar's Upkar, and Prasad Productions Milan were the significant Hindi films of the decade.
· Among the regional languages, Malayalam cinema derived much of its strength from literature during the sixties.
· Malayalam cinema hit the headlines for the first time when Ramu Kariat's Chemmeen (1965) won the President's Gold Medal.
· Towards the end of the decade, Mrinal Sen's Bhuvan Shome, signaled the beginnings of the new wave in Indian Cinema.
New Indian Cinema
The New Indian Cinema emerged as a reaction to the popular cinema's Other Worldliness. It is a cinema of social significance and artistic sincerity, presenting a modern, humanist perspective more durable than the fantasy world of the popular cinema.
Ritwik Ghatak swooped on the Indian scene with new dynamism. His films constitute a record of the traumas of change form the desperation of the rootless and deprived refugees from East Bengal. (Meghe Dhaka Tara, Ajantrik, Komal Ghandhar, Subarnarekha).
Mrinal Sen is the ebullient one-experimenting with neorealism as well as new wave and fantasy. His notable films are Bhuvan Shome, Chorus, Mrigaya, Ek Din Pratidin, Akaler Sandhane, and Kharij & Khandahar. He has also won several national international awards.
In Bombay, a new group of filmmakers emerged on the Hindi cinema. Notable amongst them are Basu Chatterji (Sara Akash), Rajinder Singh Bedi (Dastak), Mani Kaul (Uski Roti, Duvidha), Kumar Shahani (Maya Darpan), Avtar Kaul (27-Down), Basu Bhattacharya (Anubhav), M.S. Sathyu (Garam Hawa), Shyam Benegal (Ankur), and Kanthilal Rathod (Kanku).
In Calcutta, following the trend set by Ray, Ghatak and Sen, Tapan Sinha and Tarun Majumdar also made some note worthy films. (Kabuliwala, Hatey Bazarey, Harmonium, Safed Haathi; Balika Bodhu, Nimantran, Ganadevta, Dadar Kirti).
The seventies has further-widened the gap between multi star big budgeted off beat films. The popular Hindi hits of the decade include Kamal Amrohis Pakeeza, Raj Kapoor's Bobby, Devar's Haathi Mere Saathi, Ramesh Sippy's Sholay, Zanjeer, Deewar, Khoon Pasina, Yaadon Ki Baarat, Kabhi Kabhi, Dharamveer, Amar Akbar Anthony, Hum Kisise Kum Nahin, and Muqaddar ka Sikandar.
Of these majority of the films were action oriented with revenge as the dominating theme.
End of the Century
· Down in the South, the new wave cinema originated in Karnataka and Kerala. Pattabhi Rama Reddy's Damskara (70) and Adoor Gopalakrishnan's Swayamvaram (72) were the trendsetters in Kannada and Malayalam respectively.
· This continued with a series of socially conspicuous films like M.T. Vasudevan Nair's Nirmalyam, B.V.Karanth's Chomana Dudi, Girish Karnad's Kaadu, Girish Kasara Valli's Ghatasradha, G. Aravindan's Uttarayanam and Thamp, K. Balachander's Arangetram, Avargal and Apoorva Ragangal, Adoor's Kodyettam, K.G. George's Swapnadanam and P.A. Backer's Chuvanna Vithukal and G.V.Iyer's Hamsageethe.
· The Hindi avante garde or new wave seems to have reached its bloom period towards the end of the seventies with the coming of film makers like Govinda Nihalani (Aakrosh), Saeed Mirza (Albert Pinto Ko Gussa Kyon Aata Hai, Aravind Desai ki Ajeeb Daastan), Rabindra Dharmaraj (Chakra), Sai Paranjpe (Sparsh), Muzafar Ali (Gaman) and Biplab Roy Chowdhari (Shodh).
· The movement spread to the other regional cinemas such as Marathi, Gujarathi, Assamese, Oriya and Telugu.
· Directors like Jabbar Patel (Samna, Simhasan), Ramdas Phuttane (Sarvasakshi), Ketan Mehta (Bhavni Bhavai). Babendranath Saikia (Sandhya Rag), Jahanu Barua (Aparoopa, Papori), Manmohan Mohapatra (Klanta Aparanha, Majhi Pahacha), Nirad Mohapatra (Maya Miriga) and Gautam Ghose (Ma Bhoomi) came to the scene with their films.
· The first half of nineties witnessed the release of some better films in Hindi as well as in other regional languages. Drishti and Drohkal (Nihalani), Lekin (Gulzar), Disha (Sai Paranjpe), Prahar (Nana Patekar), Parinda (Vinod Chopra), Diskha (Arun Kaul), Kasba (Kumar Shahani), Rudaali (Kalpana Lajmi), Maya Memsaab (Ketan Mehta), Mujhse Dosti Karoge (Gopi Desai), Suraj Ka Satwan Ghoda & Mammo (Benegal), Who Chokri (Subhankar Ghosh)& Ek Doctor Ki Maut (Tapan Sinha), were some of the notable Hindi films from Bengal, Orissa, Assam and Manipur came films like Tahader Katha, Bagh Bahadur, Charachar (Buddhadeb Dasgupta), Uttoran (Sandip Ray), Wheel Chair (Tapan Sinha), Unishe April (Rituparno Ghosh), Adi Mimansa, Lalvanya Preethi (A.K. Bir), Nirbachana (Biplab Roy Chowdhari), Halodhia Choraya Baodhan Khai, Firingoti (Jahau Barua), Haladhar (Sanjeev Hazarika), and Ishanou (Aribam Shayam Sharma). In the South Malayalam Cinema presented some notable films. They include Vasthuhara (Aravindan).
A BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO TAMIL CINEMA
Films have been shown in India since 1896 when the Lumiere brothers introduced their cinematograph, six months after its first appearance in Paris. The first Indian feature film was made by D. G. Phalke in 1912. Films came to south India a year after they were introduced in Bombay.
The Tamil film industry, based in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, enjoys the widest visibility of any regional South Asian cinema. Though in the past few years, the Bombay "masala" formula has started to shape storylines, the films still embrace a greater degree of realism than most of their Bollywood counterparts.
R. Nataraja Mudaliar is credited with the first silent Tamil film in 1917, Keechaka Vadham. Previous to this, Tamil films were limited to filmed stage plays and "short" subjects.
When sound films began being produced in Bombay and Calcutta, there was no sound production or sound studio in Madras, the center of the Tamil film industry. In 1932 and 1933, Tamil films were produced in Bombay, Calcutta and Poona.
The first Tamil sound film, Pavalakkodi, was made in 1934 and contained 50 songs. The success of early Tamil sound films led to the construction of up-to-date studios in the South during 1935-1936. Producers in the Madras area began to take charge of Tamil production, gradually taking over production for the nearby Telegu area as well as the Kannada and Malayalam language groups. In the 1950s, Madras would pass Bombay in volume of production.
The first Tamil film to be successful in both Tamil and Hindi versions was Chandralekha. Made on a budget of Rs. 3,000,000 it was released in 1948. The director, S. S. Vasan, and producer, A. K. Sekar, designed a huge production campaign so successful that Chandralekha grossed Rs. 10,000,000.
One of the most unique features of Tamil cinema is the way the medium has been used and intelligently exploited to make political commentary and win political elections. Screenwriter C. N. Annadurai and actors M. G. Ramachandran and Sivaji Ganesan utilized their films to move into political office in the 1940s and 1950s. Films with political themes continue to be made into the present day with some recent examples such as S. Shankar's Kadhalan and Muthalvan and Mani Ratnam's "trilogy" Roja, Bombay and Dil Se.
In the 1960s, director K. Balachander created movies with bold themes in cinematic styles and gave birth to such "all-India" stars as Kamal Hasan, Rajnikanth and Sridevi.