Mirch Masala (Ketan Mehta, 1987).
Spanning almost three decades, the Indian Parallel Cinema movement produced more than 200 feature films, outnumbering those of the French New Wave and the New German Cinema combined. The sheer prolificity of the period confirms its historical significance but makes its character and contours difficult to comprehend in the aggregate. A new comprehensive study by Omar Ahmed, The Revolution of Indian Parallel Cinema in the Global South (1968–1995), surveys the birth and development of Parallel Cinema, contextualizing it in the political, economic, and social crucible of a young nation. The book traces the early influences on the movement, the effect of the Emergency years in the mid-1970s—during which Prime Minister Indira Gandhi ruled by decree, censored the media, and imprisoned political enemies—and, finally, the movement’s decline in the face of right-wing majoritarianism.
The story begins in the 1940s, when the Indian People’s Theatre Association (IPTA) played a crucial role in championing the cause of downtrodden peasants through theater and cinema. Between 1942 and 1946, it produced a loose collection of iconoclastic films, including the directorial debuts of Bimal Roy (Udayer Pathey, 1944), K. A. Abbas (Dharti Ke Lal, 1946), and Chetan Anand (Neecha Nagar, 1946). These were some of the first defiantly political films to be made in the mainstream of Indian cinema, relating a unified story of social and political mobilization and leveling savage attacks at capitalist exploitation—themes that would echo later in the works of Parallel Cinema filmmakers like Shyam Benegal and Govind Nihalani.
Ritwik Ghatak was the first iconoclast of alternative Indian cinema and the single biggest influence on the Parallel Cinema to come. His films, rooted in the post-Partition trauma of displacement, were often daring experiments with film form, especially in terms of sound and editing. During his brief stint, from 1966 to ’67, as a professor at the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), Ghatak shaped the minds of a generation of filmmakers, including his students Mani Kaul and Kumar Shahani—the two most influential avant-garde practitioners in the Parallel Cinema canon.
With film societies germinating in major urban centers, a trend now known as the Film Society Movement, and the establishment of the International Film Festival of India (IFFI) in 1952, the country’s film lovers were exposed to a wide range of cinema from around the world, shaping the sensibilities of future filmmakers. British film critic Marie Seton, who came to India in 1952 at the invitation of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, played an influential role in promoting Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali (1955) in the West, the success of which helped film societies spread beyond metropolitan areas to small towns through the 1960s. The state-funded Film Finance Corporation (FFC) was established in 1960 to provide essential financing to emerging filmmakers departing from the dominant musical mode and clichéd narratives of Bollywood, though its first seven years were characterized by cautious, conservative, and conventional projects. In 1968, filmmakers Mrinal Sen and Arun Kaul published their “Manifesto for a New Cinema” in the inaugural issue of the Bombay-based film journal Close Up. All of these factors, and the promotion of film societies and seminars by both Nehru and his daughter, Indira Gandhi, laid the groundwork for an alternate cinema called Parallel Cinema to take off.
Top: Uski Roti (Mani Kaul, 1969). Bottom: Sara Akash (Basu Chatterjee, 1969).
Ahmed narrates the movement in four phases. The foundational phase, from 1968 to 1974, was the most innovative in terms of aesthetic creativity, leading to the creation of a new film syntax. Under the chairmanship of B. K. Karanjia, an advocate of independent and experimental cinema, there was a radical shift in the FFC’s film policy, with more unusual projects attracting state financing. A triptych of films—Mrinal Sen’s Bhuvan Shome, Mani Kaul’s Uski Roti, and Basu Chatterjee's Sara Akash—inaugurated Parallel Cinema in 1969, each of them based on the works of prominent Hindi writers, representing a major break from traditional Hindi films that drew on a repertory of formulaic potboilers for their stories. Ahmed emphasizes the contributions of cinematographer K. K. Mahajan, who shot all three films, giving each a distinct look. Mahajan’s prolific body of work—the subject of one of the book’s many case studies—would continue to defy convention and profoundly influence the look of Indian films.
The aesthetic break was concretized by the avant-garde rebels Mani Kaul and Kumar Shahani. These disciples of Ghatak and Robert Bresson rejected the realism of Ray and others, embracing a formalism connected to the traditions of Indian art, including music and painting. For them, realism was a factor in Indian cinema’s underdevelopment, tethering the films to didactic social and political communication. Kaul’s early trilogy of experimental films—Uski Roti, Ashad Ka Ek Din (1971), and Duvidha (1973)—constitute the most radical formalist experiments of Indian cinema in terms of narrative, spatial, and temporal dissonance. Shahani was close on his heels with his debut, Maya Darpan (1972), an audacious experiment in color shot by Mahajan. Its critique of patriarchal structures, with women at the center, signaled a representational shift that was soon taken up by others, most fervently by the regional strain of Parallel Cinema filmmakers.
Gradually, Parallel Cinema overturned the industrial hegemony of Bombay, creating centers of production across the country, working in languages other than Hindi. U. R. Ananthamurthy’s Kannada-language Samskara (1970), filmed in Karnataka, paved the way for other filmmakers from the periphery, especially in West Bengal and Kerala, to launch an attack on all forms of orthodoxy, specifically caste, religion, and patriarchy. Malayalam cinema from Kerala proved far more substantial and consistent than the Kannada New Wave, producing lyrical visual masters like Aravindan Govindan and Adoor Gopalakrishnan, as well as the literary giant M. T. Vasudevan Nair, who has over 50 screenplays to his name.
Top: Samskara (U. R. Ananthamurthy, 1970). Bottom: Ankur (Shyam Benegal, 1974).
The Naxalite Movement in 1968, a peasant insurgency, along with a growing anti-caste movement, galvanized a generation of Indian youth and called for the total annihilation of the neocolonial system. It had a profound impact on Parallel Cinema, influencing Mrinal Sen's Calcutta Tetralogy that invited the audience to look behind the campaign of violence and discover its underlying causes in poverty and oppression. Shyam Benegal was the first Parallel Cinema filmmaker to gain a wider audience as he turned away from the FFC and secured private financing via Blaze, one of the largest advertising companies in India, for a series of films he made in the 1970s, starting with Ankur (1974), a succinct exploration of the dynamics of power and privilege in a feudal structure. He garnered praise from Ray, who criticized Kaul and Shahani for their “self-indulgence.” Ray's criticisms contributed to the end of the first phase of Parallel Cinema and the rewriting of the FFC policy to shift away from experimentation and bold risk-taking.
In 1975, citing internal threats to the constitution of India, a 21-month period of national emergency was declared by Indira Gandhi. Filmmakers and artists who refused to cooperate were blacklisted, leaving no room for dissent. The Emergency curtailed the growth of Parallel Cinema and disrupted plans to create a sustainable infrastructure for independent, marginal, and art films, a complete volte-face from Gandhi’s earlier patronage. Karanjia and the entire FFC board resigned. From 1975 to 1977, the FFC was virtually at a standstill. Not a single film was financed, and by 1976, the FFC's independent cinema policy came under attack from various quarters for a lack of financial accountability. As a result, the criteria for granting loans were tightened, stemming opportunities for avant-garde, experimental filmmaking.
The FFC had no involvement with the handful of significant films made during this period. Experimental works like Ghashiram Kotwal (1976), influenced by the Hungarian cinema of Miklós Jancsó, could see the light of day only because of the collaborative efforts of several filmmakers, who formed a cooperative called Yukt, and with help from the FTII, which lent them equipment at a 50 percent discount. New Left movements like the Naxalite Movement and the Dalit Panthers, which aimed to bring an end to Hindu feudalism, influenced several anti-caste regional films during the Emergency, such as B. V. Karanth's Chomana Dudi (1975). Benegal’s rural uprising trilogy, particularly Manthan (1976), was made against the backdrop of the Emergency, exploring the politics of feudalism. It was crowdfunded entirely by 500,000 dairy farmers in Gujarat, each of whom contributed two rupees. John Abraham's Agraharathil Kazhuthai (1977) and Girish Kasaravalli's Ghatashraddha (1977) are scathing critiques of upper-caste hegemony. A major political voice of alternative Indian cinema to emerge in this tumultuous period was documentary filmmaker and activist Anand Patwardhan, whose work Ahmed situates as part of Third Cinema, a revolutionary film practice of decolonization and anti-imperialism in Third World countries.
Top: Ghashiram (K. Hariharan, Mani Kaul, Saeed Akhtar Mirza, and Kamal Swaroop, 1976). Bottom: Arvind Desai Ki Ajeeb Dastaan (Saeed Akhtar Mirza, 1978).
Ahmed labels the third phase, after the lifting of the Emergency, as the High Point (1978–89), arguably the period of most sustained productivity in the history of Indian cinema. In 1978, Saeed Akhtar Mirza’s debut feature, Arvind Desai Ki Ajeeb Dastaan (the second and final film to be produced by Yukt), augured a transition from rural-centric themes to a preoccupation with the new urban milieu, especially the poor, including migrants. The introduction of the Panorama section at the IFFI in 1979, a showcase for the best films of the year, offered an opportunity for critics and audiences to appreciate the true breadth of Parallel Cinema. The circulation of many Parallel Cinema films internationally at major retrospectives and festivals throughout the 1980s also drew more attention to alternative cinema back home.
With the FFC becoming the National Film Development Corporation (NFDC) in 1980, Parallel Cinema entered its most commercially successful phase. The NFDC cofinanced Richard Attenborough's Gandhi (1982) to the tune of 50 million rupees, twice as much as the FFC had parted with in the two decades of its existence, across 115 films. Ahmed minces no words by calling it a betrayal of Indian filmmakers struggling to get their first and second films financed. At the Academy Awards, only Attenborough was awarded best producer for Gandhi, completely overlooking the NFDC’s contributions to the film. Still, its substantial profits allowed the NFDC to give out larger loans to a greater number of films in the following years.
The advent of color television, beginning with Doordarshan in 1982, completely transformed the fortunes of Parallel Cinema, with many of the films, old and new, reaching millions of new viewers. The NFDC coproduced several films with Doordarshan, making it possible to increase funding to filmmakers. Many were quick to capitalize on the opportunities that television brought and enjoyed mainstream success with series such as Kundan Shah and Saeed Mirza’s Nukkad (1986–87), which deals with the struggles of the working-class urban youth, and Govind Nihalani's Tamas (1988), which lays bare the horrific violence surrounding the partition of India.
In particular, Ahmed focuses on a quartet of actors who would leave an indelible mark on Parallel Cinema and eventually become part of the mainstream: Naseeruddin Shah, Shabana Azmi, Om Puri, and Smita Patil, the last of whom adorns the cover of his book. Patil’s feminist characters—pitted against patriarchy, caste, and class oppression—were matched by her offscreen social activism and commitment to women’s rights in India. Her rebellious spirit stands out in films like Jabbar Patel’s Umbartha (1982) and Ketan Mehta’s Mirch Masala (1987). While the mainstream remained entrenched in its regressive representations of gender, especially women, Parallel Cinema produced a litany of women artists, including actresses (Deepti Naval, Mamata Shankar, Dimple Kapadia, Mita Vashisht), editors (Renu Saluja and Bina Paul), and directors (Aparna Sen, Sai Paranjpye, Kalpana Lajmi, Vijaya Mehta).
Top: Nukkad (Kundan Shah and Saeed Mirza, 1986–87). Bottom: Mirch Masala (Ketan Mehta, 1987).
In the 1980s, the political rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its right-wing Hindutva affiliates transformed the cultural and political landscape of India, and by the 1990s, secularism gave way to a polarizing brand of religious fundamentalism, masquerading as neo-nationalism under the dogma of Hindutva. While Hindutva did not initially target Parallel Cinema directly, the toxic and polarizing culture it fostered, wherein anyone critical of the BJP and its ideals was vilified, resulted in a constriction of leftist cultural spaces and platforms. This, coupled with the new economic liberalization policies that forced the NFDC to support only commercially viable projects, sounded the death knell for Parallel Cinema. Saeed Mirza's final film, Naseem, a critique of communalism, signaled the end of an era in 1995.
In the final chapter, Ahmed charts the impact and influence of Parallel Cinema on a new generation of filmmakers, including Anurag Kashyap and Dibakar Banerjee, who have shown the courage to disrupt dominant mainstream narratives through their sociopolitical films. The New Independent Cinema movement that came to fruition in 2012 has produced some remarkable films, tackling themes like loneliness in The Lunchbox (2013), judicial apathy in Court (2014), grief and suffering in Masaan (2015), and religious intolerance in Nasir (2020). Filmmakers like Anup Singh, Rajat Kapoor, and Gurvinder Singh, who were trained at the FTII and mentored by Mani Kaul and Kumar Shahani, have offered unique strands to the avant-garde stream, especially the formal rigor and aural experimentation in Gurvinder Singh’s Punjab trilogy.
Over the years, the NFDC and the National Film Archive of India (NFAI) have put considerable effort toward restoring and digitizing key works of Parallel Cinema, including Kamal Swaroop’s idiosyncratic masterpiece, Om-Dar-B-Dar (1988), hailed as “The Great Indian LSD Trip” by critic Srikanth Srinivasan. Ahmed dedicates an entire case study to film archivist P. K. Nair, who preserved around 12,000 prints in his 25 years at the NFAI. In recent years, Shivendra Singh Dungarpur’s Film Heritage Foundation (FHF) has restored Aravindan Govindan’s masterpieces, Thampu (1978) and Kummatty (1979); Aribam Syam Sharma’s Ishanou (1990); and classics like Manthan (1976) and Ghatashraddha (1977). The FHF is currently restoring John Abraham’s avant-garde Malayalam classic, Amma Ariyan (1986), which revolves around the police repression of the Naxalite activists.
Although its flame has grown dim, the candle of Parallel Cinema continues to burn in India through retrospectives and tributes at festivals and cultural events. Outside of the country, the movement has been a victim of neglect, but in recent years, the spirited efforts of Ahmed and the FHF have seen the resurrection of several titles at Cannes, II Cinema Ritrovato, the BFI, and elsewhere. Ahmed is generous in his acknowledgment of the filmmakers and scholars who have promoted the discourse on Parallel Cinema, frequently quoting such figures as Aruna Vasudev, Ashish Rajadhyaksha, and Pradip Krishen. His book serves as a glorious record of an epoch that produced one of the most enduring, edifying, and enriching movements in film history.