02 · 05 · 13

Cine de la India: guía para principiantes

Ma. Cristina Alemán, editora web (@mcristina)

Con la intención de unirme a la celebración del centenario del cine de la India redacté una breve guía al cine de la India para principiantes.

3. Recomendaciones para un primer acercamiento

Como el cine occidental, el cine de la India tiene su propio canon, un grupo de películas imperdibles para los cinéfilos. A continuación presento una lista de recomendaciones que pueden servir para comenzar:

• Awaara (1951), de Raj Kapoor
• Pyaasa (1957), de Guru Dutt
• Mother India (1957), de Mehboob Khan
• Meghe Dhaka Tara (1960), de Ritwik Ghatak
• Charulata (1964), de Satyajit Ray
• Deewaar (1975), de Yash Chopra
• Bhumika: The Role (1977), de Shyam Benegal
• Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (1995), de Aditya Chopra
• Dil Se (1998), de Mani Ratnam
• Devdas (2002), de Sanjay Leela Bhansali

Como dato curioso, hay una película de Bombay situada en México llamada Kites (2010), de Anurag Basu, en donde Bárbara Mori interpreta a la protagonista que sufre (y baila) por un amor imposible.

Finalmente, también recomiendo navegar el Internet en busca de videos de las estrellas más grandes del cine de Bombay; personalidades como Raj Kapoor, Nargis, Shahrukh Khan, Amitabh Bachchan y Aishwarya Rai cuyos brillantes momentos cinematográficos están al alcance de nuestras computadoras. Para marcar la pauta, presento un número musical de Dil Se, de Mani Ratnam:

[:en]

At the 43^rd International Film Festival of India (IFFI) and the Film Bazaar 2012 in Goa, the Cannes Film Festival announced that India would be the guest country at its 66^th edition. As part of this tribute, the Cannes program will include a gala screening of Bombay Talkies, an anthology of short films by Anurag Kashyap, Dibakar Banerjee, Zoya Akhtar and Karan Johar. In addition, one of the masterpieces of Bengala Satyajit Ray, Charulata (1964), will be shown in the Cannes Classics section.

With the intention of joining the celebration of the 100th anniversary of India’s cinema and in preparation for the Cannes Film Festival 2013, I have written a brief beginner’s guide to Indian cinema.

1.    India is not the same as “Bollywood”

When one thinks of cinema and India, the first reference is usually “Bollywood”: many spectacular musicals, women in damp saris and action scenes that are so ostentatious that they would make Arnold Schwarzenegger cry. However, the cinema of India is much more diverse than what we often imagine.

The first factor to take into account is that the Republic of India is huge. According to the World Factbook of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), India is the 7^th largest country in the world with the second largest population  (1,220,800,359 people). Less than half of the population (41%) speaks Hindi, but there are 14 other official languages, without counting the dialects, and English is usually spoken when different regions communicate with each other. The concept of India as one nation is even problematic and many scholars of India prefer to use the term “cinema of southern Asia.”

The type of cinema that we know as “Bollywood” is in reality cinema from Mumbai, that is, cinema that comes from an industry specifically located in the city of Mumbai. The academic Rosie Thomas points out that this cinema is the most commercial (in fact, the cinema of Mumbai is popular in much of Asia), but there also exists alternative cinema in India – regional productions and independent cinema like the works of Shyam Benegal, Mani Kaul and Satyajit Ray, among others.

2. “Bollywood” is not a copy of Hollywood

While India’s independent cinema has been well received by western cinephiles (Satyajit Ray’s first film, Pather Panchali, received an award at the Cannes Film Festival in 1956), popular cinema has generally been scorned.

The mistake, according to Thomas, consists in measuring Mumbai’s film industry by western cinematic standards. When a “Bollywood” film is not evaluated on its own terms, it runs the risk of appearing to be an exotic and enlarged copy of a Hollywood production.

Like any cultural product coming from a country or a region, the cinema of India is filled with allusions to their literature, their poetry, their history and their founding myths. But beyond the cultural references that could elude any foreigner, the cinema of India is also immersed in cinematic practices (of production, distribution and attendance) that are unfamiliar to us.

The questions of narrative structure and the standards of authenticity are not the same in “Bollywood” as in Hollywood. Although on occasions a film from Mumbai may seem similar to a recent successful U.S. film, it had to go through a process of “Indianization” to make it attractive to the public of that country. The story is developed in a different manner and, of course, there are moments of entertainment that are crucial to the film: musical numbers, dances and action sequences. Thomas explains that in the popular cinema of India the emphasis is on feeling and performance, more than on the narrative coherence; on how events are going to happen, more than on what is going to happen next; on familiarity more than on originality.

It would be almost impossible to enumerate the references that are necessary to understand the cinema of India in its totality and diversity. To begin with, it is important to have these differences in mind when approaching the cinema of India and to understand that it cannot be compared to western cinema.

3.    Recommendations to start with

Like western cinema, the cinema of India has its own standards, a group of must-see films for cinephiles. Following is a list of recommendations that could serve as a beginning:

• Awaara (1951), by Raj Kapoor
• Pyaasa (1957), by Guru Dutt
• Mother India (1957), by Mehboob Khan
• Meghe Dhaka Tara (1960), by Ritwik Ghatak
• Charulata (1964), by Satyajit Ray
• Deewaar (1975), by Yash Chopra
• Bhumika: The Role (1977), by Shyam Benegal
• Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (1995), by Aditya Chopra
• Dil Se (1998), de Mani Ratnam
• Devdas (2002), de Sanjay Leela Bhansali

On a curious note, a film from Mumbai, Kites (2010) by Anurag Basu, takes place in Mexico. Bárbara Mori is the female lead who endures (and dances?) an impossible love.

Finally, I also recommend that you surf the Internet in search of videos of the greatest stars in Mumbai cinema, personalities like Raj Kapoor, Nargis, Shahrukh Khan, Amitabh Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai whose fabulous films can be seen on our computers. As a guide, I present a musical number from Dil Se, by Mani Ratnam: