S eventy-five years back, at a cul-de-sac between tradition and modernity, Indian cinema pushed boundaries to devise new meanings out of life and via creative pursuits. Seventy-five years later, Indian cinema is at a brink to cross over to a post-modern vision of life. By exploring seventy-five films in the last seven decades, this book intends to echo the shift in India's socio-political condition as reflected in its fictional cinema.

The trends are often not always clear, partly hidden and mostly dubious. Yet, In the films selected in this book, there are diverse experimentations with lyrics, music, dance, storyline, and cinematography. The essays In this book are not superficial film reviews, nor do they delve into strict theoretical mores. Rather, the essays suggest fresh approaches to viewing films, making correlations between cinema and other art forms, thereby providing critical Insights towards film awareness. Contrasting and dissimilar, the films celebrate the speckled mix of Indian diversity.

Ο n 22 March 1895 in Paris, at the Society for the Development of the National Industry, in front of a small audience, the Lumière brothers, Auguste and Louis, privately screened a single film, La Sortie de l'usine Lumière à Lyon. The brothers organised the first commercial screening later that year on the 28th day of December at the Salon Indien du Grand Café in Paris. This presentation consisted of ten short films lasting less than a minute each. Within six months, in July 1896, the films of Lumière brothers travelled to India - first Bombay followed by other cities including Calcutta and Madras. Soon there was a curiosity amongst a few affluent Indians, and experimentations with the new medium ensued. The first official Indian feature film Raja Harishchandra was released in 1913 and the first talkie in 1931, Alam Ara. Since then, the Indian film industry has never looked back and for several decades it remains world's largest producer of feature films.

The advent of sound in cinema helped flourish films in diverse Indian languages. All these early films (in the different Indian languages) were indebted to the traditional musical theatre. This legacy ensured that right from its birth, Indian cinema's aesthetics had a deep influence of music and dance. Most of the early Indian films were based on mythology derived from the epics 'Ramayana' and 'Mahabharata. Even today these two are deeply indoctrinated in the Indian collective psyche and their influences continue to overwhelm the Indian mind in both the social and the cinematic contexts. However, as early as 1921, Dhiren Ganguly deviated from the usual run of mythological films to make Bilet Ferot (England Returned) which was a pioneering social satire of the times. Through the whole of the '20s, the political unrest in the country had its impact on cinema as well. Alongside the populist films that benefited by showcasing crass consumerism and mindless entertainment at times there were others who unmistakably sowed seeds of rebellion through their films. Expectedly, India's Cinematograph Act was passed in 1918 during the dying months of the World War I with effect from 1 August 1920. Based on the British Cinematograph Act 1909, the Indian version's objective was nothing less than censoring the content of films to be exhibited for public consumption - a definitive ploy by the British government to prevent spread of nationalist sentiment through cinema.

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