Conscience of the Race

Cinema came to India from France on 7th July 1896, when six silent film strips, made by Lumiere brothers, were shown in Mumbai’s Watson Hotel. Three Years later, a Marathi still photographer, H S Bhatwadekar shot India’s first movie strip in Kamla Nehru Park in Mumbai. Fourteen years after that, in 1913, D G Phalke made the first Indian feature film, Raja Harishchandra. The Indian cinema became the world’s largest in volume, overtaking Japan in 1971. Some 900 feature films are added every year, bringing the total to nearly 33, 000 at the end of 2003. Since Satyajit Ray compelled the world’s attention to the Indian cinema through his debut, Pather Panchali in 1955, a new genre has been added, called variously as auteur, art parallel, minority, offbeat etc: Ray himself preferred the term offbeat. In this chronicle, the author presents an uptodate bird’s eye view of the genre and holds that in its totality, it reflects the conscience of the race.