- Bibekananda Ray

"... The Indian filmmaker must turn to life and reality and his ideal should be de Sica, not de Mille." Satyajit Ray

There are many ways of introducing India’s offbeat cinema, depending on whom it is introduced to. To foreigners, it has to be introduced differently than to our own people. Interpretations can also be diverse. Many people see it as an aberration from the more voluminous mainstream cinema but few will deny, as this author believes, that it is a vehicle of truer creative self-expression, reflecting the ‘conscience, of the race’.

Diversity is the hallmark of Indian cinema. Although many regional cinemas have been influenced (if not stifled too) by the mainstream Hindi cinema, their milieus are diverse. Many regional mainstream cinemas are using the ingredients of successful Hindi blockbusters, which present, as Satyajit Ray put it, ‘a synthetic, non-existent society’. This siren attraction works for only a handful of producers who can bear the enormous cost of making them, which ordinary regional producers cannot afford.

The first Indian realist film- the label was then unknown- is Savkari Pash (aka ‘An Indian Shylock’) made by Baburao Painter for Maharashtra Film Company, Kolhapur and released in 1925. It was a silent film, comparable to Erich Yon Stroheim’s Greed (1924), on the stark theme of indebtedness of Maratha peasants to cruel usurers; so popular it became that it was remade by Painter as a talkie in 1936. V Shantaram, acting and directing from the Silent Era, made some realistic films, e.g. Duniya Naa Mane (1937) and Dahej (1950)- the first on a young girl forced to marry an old widower and and the second on dowry in marriage- but made different films too. The first offbeat film, true to the European syndrome, was Nemai Ghosh’s Chhinnamul (1950) and Bimal Roy’s Do Bigha Zameen (1953). However, the first offbeat film to become a global rave and a kind of benchmark for the genre is Satyajit Ray’s debut in 1955, Pather Panchali. In his 34 long and short features as well as five documentaries Ray proved himself to be its most steadfast and renowned contributor. The ripples, formed by Pather Panchali, swelled virtually to a wave in just 15 years, after the unexpected box-office success of Mrinal Sen’s Bhuban Shqme and poignant realism of Mani Kaul’s Uski Roti, both in 1969.

The inspiration behind the offbeat genre came from the ‘New Wave’ cinema of Europe. Bimal Roy’s inspiration for Do Bigha Zameen came from some Italian, French and Japanese neo-realist films that he saw in the 1st International Film Festival in Kolkata in 1952. Satyajit Ray was inspired by De Sica’s Bicycle Thief Films before Pather Panchali were not unrealistic but what made Satyajit Ray an exception was his resolve, evident in every film thereafter, not to dilute realism with extraneous ingredients of songs, dances or burlesque which mark and mar many mainstream films. Most other offbeat filmmakers too tread his path, with uneven talent and success but the viewers of their films are a minority. A rough estimate has it that only about three per cent of films, released every year, are ‘offbeat’; the rest are the so-called ‘middle’ or ‘mainstream’ cinema, mostly of the entertaining kind, or just trash.

The offbeat genre turned upside down certain conventions, common in the mainstream cinema. As many silent feature films took off from popular plays, stage conventions persisted in cinema for a long time. Acting was theatrical- loud and wordy; characters entered and went out from the focus field, as in a stage-play. Even the songs and dances, as Satyajit Ray said, are ‘a legacy of the theatrical-operatic tradition’. Offbeat directors ‘de-dramatized’ cine-acting. In Nayak (1966), Ray devoted two sequences to underline the difference between cinematic and stage acting by their advocates. In an interview to Sharmila Tagore for a video news-magazine, shortly before his death, he spoke of precision in cinematic acting, as opposed to exaggeration in theatrical, how "slight excess before the camera could ruin a scene". Theatrical conventions persist in many regional cinemas, burdened with ‘words, words, words’ - a legacy from folk plays- and ceaseless drone on the soundtrack.

Major regional cinemas have, since 1970s, have developed an offbeat- genre as a kind of protest to generally un-cinematic mainstream. As the French historian of Indian cinema (The Cinemas of India, 2000) says, "New Cinema is a direct reaction to the total absence of ‘roots’ - not to speak of an aesthetic vacuum- which characterized commercial Hindi cinema of the 1960s and ‘70s". However, most artistes and technicians work in both without any qualm, because they cannot survive on the offbeat genre alone, except Ray’s team in his early films, who waited for his next film. Inevitably, mainstream films are many more in number and bring more money to producers. Because of this, some offbeat directors have defected to the mainstream; it is rarely the other way about. G.V. Iyer of Kannada cinema is perhaps a solitary exception.

Many offbeat filmmakers evince originality in theme and treatment but few are alike. There is no common creed or ethos except their urge to make their films reflect reality, un-spoilt by inroads of extraneous entertaining values. Some films convey anger and angst, conspicuously Mrinal Sen’s and Govind Nihalani’s, against the social, economic and political order; others fume at obscurantism, caste barriers, religious bigotry and oppression of women and other weaker people.

Satyajit Ray used the word ‘offbeat’ to describe his kind of cinema. In an article in 1965, he wrote: "I knew, what I was going to do was offbeat". In Italy and France, where this kind of cinema first emerged during the Second World War, it earned the rubrics- ‘Neo-Realist’, Auteur (‘author’) and Nouvalle Vague (‘New Wave’). When the genre started in India with Ray’s Pather Panchali in 1955, it began to be called ‘art’ or parallel cinema, used extensively from the 1970s when a kind of ‘wave’ of such films rose in Hindi, Bengali and Malayalam. However, ‘offbeat’ is a better rubric, because not all such films were artistic and the genre never ran parallel to the more popular mainstream, because offbeat films were and continue to be fewer.

A phenomenon of the 1940s, which contributed to the rise of the offbeat genre, was, the retreat of the story from cinema, like that of poetry with the advance of civilization. Feature films with thin, or practically no, storylines but replete with entertaining ingredients like songs, dances and fights, became a new craze after the Second World War. Contractors, flush with funds, earned from War supplies and black marketing, invested in filmmaking for big profit. They popularized a form of mindless and debasing entertainment, having no desire or ability of the urban middle class, who were making films before, to protect or promote culture. B N Reddy was so distressed by this trend in Telugu cinema that he gave up filmmaking in the prime of his career. Bimal Roy in Mumbai, equally disgusted, tried to check this trend, unsuccessfully.

Offbeat cinema was, in a sense ‘a return to the story’. Writing on the so-called Indian New Wave in 1971, Satyajit Ray wrote:

"Considering its lusty existence for well over two thousand years, it seems naive to believe that the last ten years or so have somehow seen the demise of the story.... The love of narrative, in no matter what disguised form, is too deeply ingrained in the human species. By discarding the story altogether, one would be destroying the very basis of a film that a lot of people are expected to see and like."

The story thinned in some offbeat films too but for a different reason. Some avantgarde European filmmakers were discarding it in the 1960s; this influenced a few of the first and second generation offbeat directors in India. Mrinal Sen came under the influence of two avant-garde filmmakers of France- Jean Luc Goddard and Francois Truffeaut- and emulating them, was "irresistibly drawn towards a non-narrative form and, in the process, trying to de-emphasize plot and incident" to lend to his films a ‘contemporary idiom’. "I do not any longer want to see my film being controlled by a thoroughly calculated and thus fully developed story". However, box-office failures of many of these films made him return to the narrative in films.

Adoor Gopalakrishnan does not think that the story is disappearing from feature films; only its concept is changing. He told this author on 30 January 2001:

"There is no need for cinema to be an offshoot of literature; in fact, it should ideally free itself from literature and the stage. Means of expression in cinema and literature (also stage) are different. In a true work of cinema, the story could be secondary just an excuse. The story could just be the seed of an idea that the filmmaker wants to convey."

Themes, Conventions & Influences

Although there are a wide variety of themes in offbeat films, some of them appear to be favourite and recurrent; certain trends and tendencies can also be noted. As per Zavattini’s prescription, most of them deal with the poorer, weaker and the under privileged people and their problems in an unequal inequitable society. Regional ethos marks many of these but few reach out to a truly national ethos, or depict universal situations. However, their regionalism subsumes some common concerns, like the exposure of Machiavellian politics (Mrinal Sen, Shyam Benegal, Buddhadev Dasgupta, Gautam Ghosh, Utpalendu Chakravorti, Govind Nihalani, Prakash Jha, Ramesh Sharma), poverty and exploitation (Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen, Ritwik Ghatak, Utpalendu Chakravorti, Shyam Benegal, Buddhadev Dasgupta, Gautam Ghosh), class and caste conflicts (Mrinal Sen, Shyam Benegal, Prakash Jha, Utpalendu Chakravorti) etc.

Another recurrent theme is feminism in various forms, like problems of widows, women’s right to work outside home and to love and live with men of their choice (sometimes, other than husbands). A few instances of the latter - the most noted- are Ray’s Charuata and Ghare Baire, Aparna Sen’s Paroma, Dr. B N Saikia’s Agnisnaan and Koaha and Kalpana Lajmi’s Ek Pal. Plight of young widows was the theme of Girish Kasaravalli’s Ghata Shraddha (1977), Prema Karanth’s Phaniyamma (1982), Rituparno Ghosh’s Chokher Baai (2003) and a host of other films. S R Puttana Kanagal dealt with male oppression of women in Sherapanjara (1972). A husband’s infidelity to wife is the theme of Dr. Jabbar Patel’s Umbartha. Poverty and misery continue to interest younger filmmakers. Films like Paar (Gautam Ghosh), Damu/ (Prakash Jha), Deb Shishu (Utpalendu Chakrabarti), Shodh (Biplab Ray Chowdhury), Uski Roti (Mani Kaul), Aakrosh (Govind Nihalani) and Chakra (Rabindra Dharmaraja) deal with one or other aspect of this ubiquitous Indian reality.

Many offbeat films have been made on social transition from agriculture to industry, exploitation and oppression of peasants by feudal lords, despite abolition of the zamindari (‘intermediary’) system and drastic land reforms after Independence in certain States, notably West Bengal and Kerala, benefitting the landless. Notable among filmmakers on these themes are Adoor Gopalakrishnan (Elippathayam), Gautam Ghosh (Dakhal), Prakash Jha (Damul) and Kumar Shahani (Maya Darpan). Although social disparity and so-called class strife is on the rise, even among the very rich (Shyam Benegal’s Kalyug) and the under-privileged (Chakra by Rabindra Dharmaraja, Thaneer Thaneer by K Balachander), the emphasis is on the phenomenon in the rural or semiurban milieu.

Philosophical and moral issues are also not alien to the genre. Aravindan’s Chidambaram (1985) dealt with sin and retribution, Adoor’s Mukha Mukham (1984) with political morality and Budhadev Dasgupta’s Dooratwa with women’s chastity. Unrest in campus to an unbelievable extent was the theme of Ketan Mehta’s Holi (1984); corruption in high places was analysed in Ramesh Sharma’s New Delhi Times (1985).

These concerns are consistent with the offbeat ethos, all over the world; these are the expressions of the ‘conscience of the race’. However, a humourless obsession with these and their often-morbid treatment tend to blunt the aesthetic edge of the films and repulse common viewers. Realism does not necessarily create rasa of Sanskrit aesthetics, or aesthetic delight. It does not need to be overstated that offbeat filmmakers are imbued with much deeper social awareness than makers of popular films. They tilt, more convincingly, at the Government, or the so-called Establishment, although without State institutional grants and loans, the genre would have withered long ago. Even when the films have been openly critical of the government or the politicians who head or run it, governments have awarded them at home and sent them for competition to foreign festivals. This has not happened to many such cinemas in other countries.

Influence on Politics, Society & Culture

Nirad C Chaudhury once observed: "If I am asked, what human activity is most widely appreciated and easily understood as cultural expression in India today, I would not have a moment’s hesitation in replying, it is cinema." Cinema’s influence on politics has been almost as much as that of politics on cinema. Mrinal Sen treated political themes conspicuously in many of his films; Satyajit Ray less so in a fewer films, like Jana Aranya and Hirak Rajar Deshe. So did Ritwik Ghatak (notably in his penultimate Jukti, Takko Aar Gappa), John Abraham (Amma Ariyan) and a host of his contemporaries in Malayalam cinema, Ramesh Sharma (New Delhi Times), Govind Nihalani (Ardh Satya) and Prakash Jha (Damul, Mrityudanda and Gangajal). On the whole, politics and cinema remained apart in other regional cinemas, and as filmmakers began relying on government concessions, subsidies and other forms of patronage, the trend appeared to subside by the mid-1990s.

The offbeat cinema’s influence on other arts and what is meant by ‘culture’ has been deeper and wider than that on politics. From the silent days, cinema has been influencing the people’s lives in various ways. The young people, both boys and girls, ape cine stars in dress. In Bengal, a type of blouse (introduced by Rabindranath Tagore’s sister-in-law, Gyanadanandini Devi), which Kanan Devi wore in her early films, e.g. Mukti, became a fashion among women. Uttam Kumar’s hair-cut and back-brushed mane were the fad, just as Amitabh Bachchan’s unbuttoned shirt and ‘macho’ jeans were copied by school and college-going boys in the 1970s. Pramathesh Barua’ s Bengali, and Bimal Roy’s Hindi, Devdas (1935 & 1955) made many young men mull over unrequited love, take to a bohemian life and liquor in a suicidal mania. In the virtual explosion of cinema on television and through DVD and VCD, a film’s impact has become transitory but in my boyhood, I used to ruminate over and remain under the spell of a good film for days.

Films transform life too. After seeing Ray’s Kanchanjungha (1962), a young man wrote to the editor of a Kolkata daily that like the ‘suitor’ in the film, he had ‘freed’ a girl who valued love more than security in marriage. Prime Minister P V Narashimha Rao, while laying the foundation for Satyajit Ray Film & Television Institute in Kolkata 1994 observed that Devaki Bose’s Chandidas (1932) led him to read the Vaishnava poet. Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi (1982) familiarised the Mahatma to millions of people, all over the world. Film songs popularized Tagore’s in Bengal and of other poets and lyricists in other languages too, faster than their books did. Many poets, who would have otherwise remained unknown or perished in penury, earned fame and fortune by writing lyrics for films. So did many writers who wrote songs and stories for films, like Prem Chand in Hindi and Premendra Mitra in Bengali.

Many offbeat films have been period pieces too. Satyajit Ray’s Shatranj ke Khiladi (1977), Ketan Mehta’s Mirch Masala (1986), about a Subedar’s lust for a village belle in Guj arati village in the 19th century and Pradeep Kishen’ s Massey Saheb on a young Indian clerk’s misplaced faith in a British District Collector in the 1930s, are moving films in this genre. Girish Kamad’s Utsav (1984) recreated the amours of the elite and the wayward in an Indian city in the fourth century, adapting the Sanskrit classic, Mrichhakatikam.

Filmmaker and writer, Chidananda Dasgupta thinks, the offbeat cinema is much truer to the Indian Constitution than the mainstream:

"The Constitution says, men and women are equal; the privately-owned popular cinema says, they are not. The (mostly) State-sponsored ‘art’ cinema says that they are. The popular cinema despises the law, making its heroes take it into their hands; the art cinema berates the establishment for not giving the commoner an equal access to the law. One is the voice of the grassroots, scared by the new forces changing the traditional balance of power among diverse groups; the other is the voice of the elite, trying to lead the country towards change."

Talents in filmmaking have veered more to the offbeat than to the mainstream. Satyajit Ray is called a genius and Bengalees regard him as ‘next to Rabindranath Tagore’ among modem cultural icons. Cinematographers like Subrata Mitra and composers like Ravi Shankar stuck mainly to the offbeat, when they would have earned much more in the mainstream which would not have given them as much scope to use their creativity. V S Naipaul once said, in an interview to Newsweek in 1998,

"I think, it might well be that a lot of talent of this [20th ] century has gone into filmmaking. What has been achieved by filmmakers is quite dazzling when compared to what has been done in the novel."

Everyday thousands of people see films in some 13,000 cinema-halls and many thousands more on television and video. On the TV, not only films but also film-related programmes are a craze. Apart from reviews of new films in Friday newspapers, film news and gossip feature in big and small newspapers, virtually every day. This appetite for films on the television has benefited the offbeat genre too. Offbeat and minor mainstream films, which do not easily find commercial outlet in halls, get it on Doordarshan.

Hollywood has such an unshakeable hold on the producers and filmmakers in the mainstream that they take pride in calling the film industry in Mumbai as ‘Bollywood’. Many themes and conventions of mainstream cinema are copied from Hollywood. It is in this context that the French maestro, Jean Renoir told young Ray in 1948 that India could make’ great films’ if it could shake Hollywood out of the system. This’ shake-out’ has happened considerably in the offbeat cinema but not in the mainstream.

Satyajit Ray who is truly the guru of India’ s offbeat cinema, did not lose hope about its future, nor do his able successors, like Adoor Gopalakrishnan. Much before he made any film, Ray diagnosed the ills of the Indian cinema in an article, "What is wrong with Indian film?" in The Statesman, Kolkata on 2nd October 1948:

"What the Indian cinema needs today is not more gloss but more imagination, more integrity and a more intelligent appreciation of the limitations of the medium What our cinema needs above everything else is a style, an idiom, a sort of iconography of cinema, which would be uniquely and recognizably Indian It is only in a drastic simplification of style and content that hope for the Indian cinema resides... The raw material of cinema is life itself. It is incredible that a country, which has inspired so much painting and music and poetry, should fail to move the filmmaker. He has only to keep his eyes open, and his ears. Let him do so."

In spite of what he and others have achieved in nearly half a century since Pather Panchali (1955), his prescription has remained valid. Like Mrinal Sen, he believed, a ‘perceptive’ minority will always see offbeat films.

"They are all around us, within easy reach and in enough numbers to make a twolakh proposition pay, waiting for the right kind of offbeat movie to turn up."(An Indian New Wave, 1971).

Future of Offbeat Cinema

"What will not change would probably be the experience of sitting inside a darkened hall as a community and emoting and enjoying the largerthan-life size images and sounds overwhelming you." -Adoor Gopalakrishnan

Offbeat films are no longer a sensation that they were in the early 1970s when a ‘wave’ rose in Hindi, Bengali and Malayalam cinemas. It gradually wore off, as their quality deteriorated. Satiety about cinema also came about following an excessive diet on fast-breeding television and video. In the 1980s, only the very rich and upper middle class families owned video cassette-players but now DVD and VCD players have become ubiquitous; now almost everyone can afford to possess or hire them. Video parlours, shops for lending and selling pirated VCDs have sprung up everywhere, dealing mostly with mainstream, B-grade, soft-porn and even ‘blue’, films. People in south who refuse to speak and learn Hindi, crave Hindi blockbusters; Hindi cinema has become virtually national cinema. In a consumerist society, entertainment has become the craze of the middle-class, which has been the patron of the cinema since it began.

In such a scenario, what is the future of India’s offbeat cinema? Linked with this is the wider question: "What is the future of cinema itself?" Revolutionary technological changes from the second half of the 20th century have outdated many other mass media but not the cinema. Magnetic audio cassette outdated gramophone records in the 1950s and was itself antiquated, a few years later, by the (audio) Compact Disc. Much sooner Digital Video Disks (DVD) and Video Compact Disc (VCD) have nearly replaced Video Cassette Players and Recorders.

Changes in cinema have occurred both in the software, i.e. in its content and hardware, i.e., in technologies of making, copying and exhibiting them. Celluloid negative has been replaced by magnetic video tape and polyester negative and recently, by digital cinematography. Advances in information technology are affecting filmmaking all over the world. Computer-generated images and even actors have become a reality; special effects in Hollywood productions like Jurassic Park and Titanic were overwhelming. British Telecom is planning to transmit, electronically, feature films to cinema halls, to replace the present practice of making expensive prints. In near future, films can be digitally transferred to databases for encryption and then transmitted by satellite and receiving dish antenna to a television set but the problem with new technologies is that they change too fast. As P K Nair, former curator of National Film Archives says, "Before you get familiar with pluses and minuses of the latest equipment, the next models are out in the market."

Tomorrow’s Technology: Digital Cinema

Hope for the survival and growth of the offbeat cinema lies in the development of new technologies, like digital cinematography and digital protection. In a Digital Film Festival, held in New Delhi in March 2001 in which some 40 Indian and foreign digital films were screened, speakers outlined its advantages over conventional filmmaking. The Chief Executive Officer, Ms. Pia Singh of the organizing company, ‘Digital Talkies’ said,

"It is a much cheaper medium. You can buy a digital camera for two lakh rupees and an editing station for six to seven lakh rupees. Traditional cameras are upwards of 20 lakh rupees with editing stations for at least 50 lakh rupees.. Digital technology will create a whole new kind of filmmaking. Some people are saying that in 6-7 years, there will be beaming signals from the studio directly into the theatres, though it may not happen in 2-3 years."

Director Shekhar Kapoor, a partner of the company, believes, the new technology will suit offbeat filmmakers. Being cheap and flexible, it will give them full freedom in making and altering their films and cut out the producer or financier completely and render filmmaking much simpler.

"You can do a movie, using an inexpensive digital camera, feed it into a computer through a low-cost interface, edit it, voice it, play around with it an when you are happy, upload it on to the Net for it to be watched by, literally millions. You can do this, theoretically, without leaving your house."

Digitally-made films can have certain limitations. They may be grainy in texture and it may take long, in view of India’s existing bandwidth, to stream films on the video on the web. Digital projection to theatres will have to be confined to urban areas. There will not be much of security, as hackers may watch a new movie on their computers on the opening night itself. So will be standardization, as copies could be made with different versions. The technology of satellite transmission of digitized images has to be developed. If studios send DVDs to each theatre, they could be pirated, unless water-marked. Currently, there only a few dozen digital movie projectors in the world; therefore, a digital movie revolution is still far away.

Future Software

Howsoever revolutionary the new technologies may be, they will pose no threat to the soul of cinema; in fact, India’s mainstream cinema has begun to use some of them, despite limited budget. The digitization of cinematography will improve both the genres but offbeat filmmakers, being more cinematic, will use it more creatively. Adoor Gopalakrishnan thinks that offbeat filmmakers should not stay away from them; on the contrary, they can use them to enrich their films in form and content. He told this author on 30th January 2001:

"Dramatic advances in information technology have affected cinema too; this should not frighten the filmmaker. ...To simply cope with what is happening around us, we need to continually be adapting and reshaping ourselves. If advances continue at this pace, celluloid will in the very near future be replaced by either video, or DVD."

Changes in cinema have been phenomenal in its content too. In every filmmaking country- more so in India- the mainstream cinema, chameleon-like, changes colour, all the time, as do the viewers’ tastes. The offbeat cinema is not much a victim of these vagaries of popular tastes, because they address much deeper issues than ephemeral fashions in cinema. The themes of India’s offbeat cinema have not changed much in the last 50 years; basic concerns, like poverty, exploitation, ill treatment of women, misalliances for various reasons return in new releases, leaving a deja vu element.

Whether offbeat cinema will become more cinematic in the 21st century, or diminish, is not certain. Much will depend on the imagination and integrity of the third and next generations of offbeat filmmakers. It remains to be seen, whether they will persist making such films by swimming against the current, or eventually be swept away, like some of their compatriots of the second generation. As the NFDC says, it has not reduced its budget in sponsoring and producing offbeat films but their makers are defecting to the mainstream and quality was falling.

In over 100 years, Indian cinema has become the world’s biggest entertainment industry; no other kindred industry- music, theatre, TV or video- is anywhere near it. The capital investment including on the infrastructure of distribution and exhibition is well above 4000 crore (40,000 million) rupees; black money component is over and above it, of which no correct estimate is possible. Pather Panchali cost Satyajit Ray and the West Bengal government some two lakh rupees in early 1950s; this will not suffice to pay taxi hire bill for shooting an ordinary Hindi film, these days. Out of over 800 feature films, certified and released in a year, about one-fifth succeeds in box-office; four-fifths flop or make even. Nearly three per cent of these are offbeat.

The main problem facing offbeat filmmakers is that of financing and exhibition outlets. Except a handful of private financiers and producers, like R D Bansal in Kolkata, K. Ravindranathan Nair of General Pictures in Thiruvananthapuram (who produced most of G Aravindan’s films), or Suresh Jindal (who produced Ray’s Shatranj ke Khiladi), private finance has been generally shy for offbeat films. If the FFC and its successor, NFDC did not come on the scene and the first Chairman of the FFC, B K Karanjia (19691976) were not so liberal with loans, grants and subsidies to penurious filmmakers, many renowned offbeat films would not have been made.

Unlike a novel, a story, or a poem, a film’s reception is known in a few hours after its release. A filmmaker cannot live on a pious hope, like that of the Sanskrit playwright, Bhababhuti that "time is eternal and the earth is large; somewhere, someday, somebody will like his work". The investment in its production- often not his- has to be recouped, even without profit, as so many people’s livelihood depends on its box-office success.

Most offbeat films, being low budget, recover their investment after a six-week run in a modest chain.

The then Minister of Information & Broadcasting, Susma Swaraj announced in early 2001 that the central government is contemplating to accord industry status to cinema, which would enable producers seek bank and institutional loan. Off and on, in the past also, the government made such promises but bank loans are still elusive for producers and directors. Even if banks advance loans to producers, the bulk of it will go to makers of mainstream films with good commercial prospects; offbeat filmmakers have little chance of receiving them, although box-office failures are the same in both the genres. Getting a distribution or exhibition channel is as much difficult for offbeat producers, as getting a producer for an offbeat filmmaker.

The problem of distribution and exhibition of offbeat films is linked with their making. If private finance does not remain shy, distributors and exhibitors will not hesitate to take these films. Mrinal Sen has been pleading for years to treat offbeat films as a minority cinema and build separate small theatres for screening them on commercial basis. To this end, the NFDC launched a theatre- financing scheme to create additional seating capacity and outlets for good films. On its own admission, the scheme has "virtually come to a standstill", as there are very few applications from private builders.

Following rise in entertainment tax in many States and escalating cost of filmmaking minimum 20-25 lakh rupees as against 2-3 lakh rupees in the mid-1950s (Pather Panchali cost Ray and the West Bengal government some two lakh rupees but it earned tens of crores), cinema tickets have become costlier. In a city hall, a comfortable seat costs at least 20 rupees, as against 2-3 rupees in the 1960s. Fast spread of films in video cassettes and compact disks, even in remote rural areas, eroded the viability of cinema-halls. Because of increasing stress of modem life and difficulties of earning livelihood, most cinema-goers prefer light entertaining films to generally serious or morbid offbeat- the so-called art- films.

Early in the 21st century, the future of India’ s offbeat cinema does not seem brighter than in the 20th. In Kolkata where many great and good offbeat films have been, and are still, made, ordinary Bengali films are now made with an eye to rural and lumpen viewers. Young votaries of the offbeat genr continue to tread the uphill path but cannot change popular taste. The Guardian’s celebrated film critic, in the late 1990s, Derek Malcolm painted a bleak future of India’s offbeat genre.

"In another ten years, you might fmd that there won’t be 600 to 700 films made every year; only 200 to 300. And then it will go down from there...People like Ray wouldn’t be going into film at all...There’s a lot to criticize in India and to make a film which says, how wonderful India is would be clearly boring."

Offbeat filmmakers have expressed a variety of views on this decline in interest of offbeat films. Mrinal Sen wanted the ‘New Cinema’ to be ‘fresh, unconventional, dissenting, and iconoclastic’ and even announced a programme:

"Talking about the cold indifference of the general audience towards the glamour free low-budget films, I accept the reality and suggest that, to start with, and till we are able to have a hold on the outer audience...we should bank on the minority spectators scattered all over the country."

Shyam Benegal thinks, "Like any new wave, this one lost its freshness and became formulaic". The Central and State Governments, in spite of strident political and anti Establishment cinema, have not stopped short of producing or sponsoring them. The West Bengal Government, enthused by the income in foreign exchange by Pather Panchali, produced a whole lot of films, many of which ran into losses, or could not be released. However, frontline directors, like Ketan Mehta, Prakash Jha, Govind Nihalani and even Shyam Benegal went for mainstream matinee idols and wove in entertainment values to lace their offbeat themes with weak justification for commerce. Many offbeat films, e.g. Saeed Mirza’s Naseem (1996), Benegal’s Mammo (1995) and Sardari Begum(1997), Mani Kaul’s Idiot (1992), Kumar Shahani’s Char Adhyay, Gautam Ghosh’s Patang (1993) and Gudia (1997), M S Sathyu’s Gallige (1995) and Nihalani’s Hazaar Chaurasi ka Maa (1997) lay in cans for a long time, as no distributor and exhibitor offered to buy or screen them.

For the first time, national film awards for 1990 went to three mainstream filmsAgnipath, Karthavyam and Ghayal; in justification, the Chairperson of the jury, Ashok Kumar said,

"Art cinema, predominated as it is by philosophy, psychology and intense subtleties, is rarely understood by the people. Communication is of prime importance in cinema. So we decided to take those pictures which quickly communicate."

Prakash Jha, whose two latest films- Mrityudand (1996) and Gangajal (2003)embraced features of the mainstream, e.g. in casting mainstream stars, justifies his deviation. He says, his aim is to "draw the half-serious viewer into the theatre and entertain him with films that are more serious in intent and content".

Girish Kasaravalli of Kannada offbeat believes,

"In the 1970s, people had a lot of serious things like art, films, theatre and literature to discuss. Today, the priorities have changed, because people are finding it difficult to make both ends meet and there’s a general tendency to go for light, casual stuff... Parallel cinema in the old sense cannot survive. The economy, as a whole, has gone past the stage of subsidizing culture. And even in the years of Shyam Benegal, art cinema made no inroads in establishing its own exhibition network that later generations could use and benefit from."

Shaji N Karon, Aravindan’s cinematographer who turned a celebrated director of award winning Piravi and Vanaprastham, is optimistic. He believes, "Time will change and art films will definitely reach people."

This author believes, the decline of interest in offbeat films is due to gradual lumpenisation of cinema’s viewers since the Second World War. Instead of the middleclass which formed the bulk of viewers and makers of films till the 1970s, fly-by-night producers are investing in films with an eye to the rural illiterate and the urban lumpen classes who, not having access to DVD, VCD and VCR, flock to cinema-halls to see entertaining and B-grade films to forget their worries for a while.

Only Adoor Gopalakrishnan whose films Ray liked best among offbeat films does not think, offbeat films are in any crisis. On the contrary, he sees a good future for offbeat cinema, as he told this author on 30 January 2001:

"More and more people are seeing these films, on the [TV] channels, if not in the cinema-house. Of course, making them is difficult as in the beginning, particularly finding producers or fmanciers. I see a movement even when a few filmmakers continue to do what they believe in ... when they do not succumb to the market pressures and the formula of high-profit cinema."

India has some 13 thousand cinema-halls but not one of them exclusively shows offbeat films. In Delhi’s Trade Fair Grounds in Pragati Maidan, three mini-theatres used to show them and foreign classics in mid-1990s; now they present a mixed fare. During festivals, a lot of Indian and foreign serious films are shown, which are generally seen by film buffs. A Mumbai theatre used to show only new offbeat films, where Bhuban Shome, Ankur and Bhumika were premiered. Its owner, Siddheswar Dayal no longer does so for sheer economics. He says, "How can a theatre run Bhuban Shome and Sholay at the same costs and expect to get similar returns?"

The new generation that has entered the offbeat genre in India or abroad from the 1990s is upbeat about information technology and liberalized economy. Filmmakers like Pamela Rooks, Dev Benegal, Nagesh Kukunoor and Shekhar Kammula do not carry the baggage of history and tradition, like the previous two generations. As Dev Benegal says,

"The next generation of filmmakers. . ..does not have ideological baggage. . .. There is a new audience, a new India and they are looking at new movies and want new movies."

Right from the Silent Era (1912-1934), there has always been a distinct genre, neither pretending to art nor catering inane entertaining for the sake of it. They steer clear of the excesses of the mainstream and offbeat cinema, tell engaging stories and cut across social strata in viewer ship. This is the core of India’s good cinema, given the label of the ‘middle cinema’ by the media. There is some truth in the cynical remark of William Fried kin, the director of Exorcist, 1973:

"If the film is liked by the audience and the critic, it is a great film. If it is liked only by the audience, it is a greater film. If it is liked only by the critics, it is a piece of shi 1. "

The hope for a better cinema lies in the spread of literacy and rising discrimination of viewers; Kerala has proved this. The razzmatazz and mindless entertainment of mainstream cinema will, one day, become stale. Then the offbeat cinema will return to its glory of the 1970s. Till that time, its makers will have to hone their skills in new technologies to forge in the smithy of their souls ‘the uncreated conscience of the race’, because no other genre of Indian cinema can truly reflect it. c