Bollywood, Tollywood and Dollywood

Engl 332 N. Langah

Kinship, social ties, values and ideals Films on religious themes were rebellious Westernization was critiqued as an impact of

colonization Western values were seen as threatening for

Indian familial and social traditions

Pre-Independence Cinema: 1930s and 1940s

The problems of fledging nation

1950s cinema

Beat of resistance aesthetics which found three different expressions in: a. Mumbai-based industries refereed to in the

past decade or so as ‘Bollywood’ b. Kolkata based productions in Tollygunj as

‘Tollywood’ c. Dhaka-based productions called

‘Dollywood’

Period beat of the 1970s:

Context of 1970s Bengal/India and India/Bangladesh. In India: Resistance against the rulings of the

capital globally. Economic turmoil, underemployment, poverty, illiteracy, corruption

In Pakistan: total warfare in response to Sheikh Mujibur Rehman’s call for independence. Critics propose India’s support of 1971 war in Pakistan. Food crises, no industry, economic disorder

How Cinematic text is welded to the context of its productions: Social Movements and the Politics of Representation in the Cinema of

the 1970s

Social anxieties An aspiration of India in Nehru’s dream 1950s to 1980s: stories woven around the

protagonist as the peripheral character (Shami Kapoor, Dharmendra, Raj Kapoor, Amitabh)

Melodrama, romance, social issues, religious issues, satire, mystery/suspense/thriller.

Bollywood in 1970s

Melodrama Comedy Children’s cinema Romance Social issues Religious issues

Tollywood productions of the 1970s

The social movements of the 1970s provide a resistance aesthetic connecting alternative cinema practices both in Tollywood and Dollywood with the Hindi language productions from Mumbai.

Outcome of such social movements:

Underlining the idea of nation and national culture

Key sites on which the local, global and transnational intersect with each other

Q: how slippery and constructed the idea of ‘national’ in South Asian cinema can be

Example: 1990sonwards: Bangladeshi and West-Bengali popular film production and their transnationalization and localization

South Asian Film

Bengali speaking audience within their national or regional boundaries

Audience: Bengali-speaking Bengali Muslims in postcolonial Bangladesh and Bengali Hindus in West Bengal and eastern India

These two Bengali cinemas remain divided in terms of the national and religious orientations of their audience but share a common language

Bengali Film Industry: Dhaka-Calcutta

Bengali Cinema of Calcutta : created a version of colonial modernity propagated by Bengali-Hindu middle class

The first film made in Dhaka was 1955 (3 decades after Calcutta. 1965 was also the time when Indian films were banned in Pakistan and the Bangaldesh war was about to happen

After the creation of Bangladesh the film production in Dhaka increased.

Bengali Film Industry: Dhaka-Calcutta

The divide between Bengali Hindu Cinema (Calcutta) and Bengali Muslim Cinema (Dhaka) becomes stronger

Calcutta and Dhaka share a love-hate relationship

West-Bengali films (melodrama) were seen as model family dramas in Bangladesh in 1960s and 1990s

The film industry in Dhaka positions itself as the base for a Bengali-Muslim cinema from 1960 onwards

Bengali Film Industry: Dhaka-Calcutta

In the last decade or so, a number of Bengali Muslim films (from Bangladesh) have been remade in Calcutta film industry for Indian Hindu-Bengali audience

Bengali Film Industry: Dhaka-Calcutta