From a modest beginning on the premises of New Theatres studio in the then Calcutta way back in the early 1930s to a magnificent awards night function at the behemoth structure of Thai Alankarn Theatre situated in the beach resort of Pattaya on the east coast of the Gulf of Thailand — Bengali cinema has indeed come a long way, crossing a few miles in between.
Both infrastructure-wise as well as monetarily, the look of this regional entertainment industry has gained a new freshness and is courting global attention now. It is drawing investors from every corner which includes corporate sponsorships.
Top-rung Bollywood production banners like Subhash Ghai’s Mukta Arts which has produced Rituparno Ghosh’s period piece Noukadubi in 2011, adapted from Tagore’s eponymous classic novel and Reliance’s Big Pictures that had earlier funded yet another critically-acclaimed project of Ghosh — Shob Charitra Kalponik — casting Bollywood bombshell Bipasha Basu in a deglamorised role opposite Tollywood’s numero uno hero Prosenjit Chatterjee in the lead, it seems Bangla movies’ golden phase is witnessing a probable resurgence after a prolonged slump.
In 2000, Ghosh’s award-winning Bariwali featuring Kirron Kher was also launched by her Hindi film actor-husband and the then censorboard chairman, Anupam Kher. Not only capital resources were pumped in or technicians pooled in from national-level sectors, an array of Bollywood artistes too have acted in Bengali flicks till date. If it was the turn of the bigwigs like Ashok Kumar, Kishore Kumar, Dilip Kumar, Dharmendra, Waheeda Rahman, Vaijayantimala Bali to don the greasepaint in the black and white films of 1950s for a vernacular movie-camera, then in the ensuing retro era, megastar Amitabh Bachchan, Danny Denzongpa, Pransaab, Kulbhushan Kharband, Shailendra Singh, Amol Palekar, Naseeruddin Shah and Tanuja flooded the local 70 mm canvas.
The 1980s-90s saw a bevy of imports like Juhi Chawla, Poonam Dhillon, Deepika Chikhalia, Ayesha Jhulka, Neelam, Vijeta Pandit, Raj Babbar, Shatrughan Sinha and Shabana Azmi serenading the Bengali silver-screen. Years later, the return of Bollywood stars has been noticeably visible in thick numbers. Be it prominent stars like Jackie Shroff, Rati Agnihotri, Jaya Prada, Ashutosh Rana, Alok Nath, Aishwarya Rai (in Ghosh’s Chokher Bali), Abhishek Bachchan (Desh and Antarmahal), Soha Ali Khan (Antarmahal and Iti Srikanta), Mukul Dev, Ashish Vidyarthi or Shakti Kapoor (who’s even tried his hand at the local jatras — open-air folk plays), a host of saleable stars and reputed actors have flocked in droves to prance across the Bengali movie marquee to lend the medium its due respect.
As popular Tollywood actress-director and MP Satabdi Roy observes that “Bangla film shoots have currently shifted their base from Phalta to Pattaya, Kolkata to San Francisco, Siliguri to Singapore, graam Bangla to Greece. People are now hungry for tourist-trotting exotic locales. They want to see some neat, smart outdoor locations for song-picturisations and dream sequences, foaming up the scenes at the theatres. Armed with high-tech equipment and glossy cinematography to offer a slick, picture-postcard look to every colourful frame on the celluloid, this greed for lapping up expensive production costs from the entrepreneurs’ side shows no signs of waning.” It’s exceedingly commendable for a regional-level industry to go global after years of lull with low-budget flicks stashed in its cans. Now the look is way slicker and stakes are even higher with fat investments and technological advancement clearing the decks for a better quality output in the cinematic art. “Marrying the audio-visual craft with corporate money was a much-needed boost to raise such a bar,” she says.
The just-concluded IBFA (International Bangla Film Academy) Awards saw a grand reception and appreciation of Bengali cinema in the overseas market. Holding a regional film industry’s programme on foreign lands and fetching in their unconditional support from the concerned cultural ministries, the resident artists’ fraternity and the Indian embassies abroad is no small feat either. This will no doubt open up the portals for a greater scope of tourism and coining of revenue on the host country’s part. But at the same time, a desi industry gets to tap, explore and create a new type of target-audience, much phoren (foreign) in nature and composition, beyond its familiar geographical bounds and the linguistic borders. The Thailand tryst was quite a show of razzle-dazzle with a flurry of neon-signs, laser-lights, disco-beats, flash-mobs and dragon-dances playing to the gallery absolutely. Besides, it saw a star-studded awards event with the teeming Tollywood glitterati making a huge slash and living it up to the hilt. The glamorous girlie gangs shopped to their hearts’ content and gorged on the local cuisine from the trademark beach-side shacks with rows of food stalls catering to the visiting crowd, amongst which many were the first-timers.
Talented young actor-filmmaker Parambrata Chattopadhyay (of the Kahaani fame) sums up the overall mood. “Kudos to the organisers (Jet Setters) for showcasing a gala spectacle on such high pedestal. This was an enormous scale for sure. But what I honestly feel is that a Bengali film festival or an awards show should happen at a place, where the Bengali populace is sufficiently dense. For example, the community has a larger strength in the East Coast of America. Even in the UK, the concentration of Bengali inhabitants is high in cities like Manchester, London and Birmingham. Here, the acceptability and response would be overwhelming am sure. In the forthcoming editions, the academy as well as the organisers can contemplate on this issue. Thus, more Bengalis can be involved in the elaborate affair,” opines Param, who’s also an avid world-cinebuff. In 2013, the IBFA is reportedly going to stage the much-hyped awards-nite at Cairo in Egypt. Hope, it augurs well for Bengali cinema in the near future. The more, the merrier.
Post the Thailand tour, popular actress Raima Sen travelled to London to be an ambassador of Bengali cinema at the recently held London Indian Film Festival (LIFF), especially to woo the next-generation NRBs (non-resident Bengalis) or the diasporic probashi Bangalis dwelling in videsh.
Two of her movies — Abosheshey, made by debutante director Aditi Roy, and 22shey Srabon, a thriller reeled by filmmaker Srijit Mukherji brought the curtains down on the festival. Bearing the legacy of her grandmother-actress, Suchitra Sen, and carrying it forth with much credence in a clutch of substantial films she has done till date, Raima was chosen as the face of contemporary Bengali cinema in London.