ISBN 978-81-925489-2-0 - ramniranjan jhunjhunwala college

Introduction to the theme of the Seminar by the Conveners
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At Cannes Film Festival – 2013, the great living legend of Indian Cinema, Mr. Amitabh Bachchan said, “We
have progressed tremendously in these last 100 years to be accepted not just within India but overseas as well is
a fantastic feeling.”
Yes, I am proud to be part of this seminar as Indian Cinema is almost winding up hundred years of its inception
and my institute, Ramniranjan Jhunjhunwala College its fifty years of its inception. This was our dream, mine
and Dr. Mishra’s to have a seminar on Indian Cinema. Dr. Mishra belongs to Department of Sociology and I
belong to Department of Philosophy; therefore sometimes I find we belong to sister departments; and believe
me I perceive these two subjects as ‘identical twins’ (but sister twins).
Viewing issues and challenges of Indian Cinema over these hundred years with its Socio-Philosophical
Perspective cannot be done in two days, probably it will takes days; but nevertheless, this is our humble attempt
to dissect the Indian Cinema World and see through it – how it has been a tremendous influencing factor then
and now on our society and our everyday philosophy of life; so also how Indian Cinema has been moulded by
society and normative philosophy of everyday life. Ours being the largest country (more than thousand films
annually) has enhanced our aesthetic realm by producing great films, directors, producers, actors, technicians,
lyricists, musicians and so on and so forth. The experimental films produced by Mani Kaul and Kumar Sahani
brought Indian Cinema at par with world film makers. Guru Dutt, Bimal Roy, Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen,
Rithwick Ghatak, Basu Bhattacharya, Adoor Gopal Krishnan, Jabbar Patel, Shyam Benegal, Syed Mirza,
Govind Nihlani and many others put Indian Cinema on the World Platform and stand parallel to Andrei
Tarkovsky, Michelangelo Antonioni, Armando Olmi, Ingmar Bergman, Jean Luc Goddard, Majid Majidi,
Akira Kurosawa and many other.
In retrospection – directors like V. Shantaram, Bimal Roy, Guru Dutt, K. Asif, Mehboob Khan, Raj Kapoor,
Kamal Amrohi, Rishikesh Mukherjee, Basu Chaterjee, Shakti Samant, Nasir Hussain, Ramesh Sippy, Yash
Chopra and many more who took cinema as a passionate art form and produced films those which can never be
erased from our minds. They have left such a deep impact on us that even when you think of any of their films
you are on a mystical-transcendental realm rooted on this earth.
The new wave, the young breed of film-makers took us to a post-modern world, where story may not matter,
but history plays a pivotal role. Directors like Shekhar Kapoor, Anurang Kashyap, Anurag Basu, Nagesh
Kukunoor, Gauri Shinde, Anusha Rizvi, Mahmood Farooqui, Anand Gandhi and others asked the audience the
questions which definitely have answers in themselves; it is something like this – ‘no reason can also be
explained with help of reason.’
Let me stop here. Cinema has infinite facets and we have number of paper presenters, paper contributors, and
keynote speakers, who will go live in this seminar and give us a complete cinematic and cinematographic
experience of ‘Hundred Years of Indian Cinema – Issues and Challenges in Retrospection (Socio-Philosophical
Perspective) that is happening for the first time in the field of academics. Thank you.
Dr. Amita Valmiki
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