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| Home > Indian Cinema > Indian Artistic Cinema
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| | Indian Artistic Cinema
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 Artistic cinema differ sharply from popular films. They are realistic, often ethnographic, and they seek to capture important aspects of Indian reality. By and large, they avoid glamour and glitz and use cinema as an artistic medium capable of exploring important areas of Indian experience. They are usually low budget and are shown at international film festivals. The Indian artistic films / cinema, understandably, do not attract the huge audiences that the popular films do. Often they are made in regional languages like Bengali and Malayalam, and do not receive pan-Indian exposure. In terms of the commitment to serious cinema, to making cinema a significant medium of artistic communication, to eschewing the vulgarities and crudities often associated with Indian popular cinema, artistic filmmakers differ significantly from their counter-parts in popular cinema.
When we talk of artistic cinema in India the first name that comes up is Satyajit Ray.  This is because he was primarily responsible for fashioning this genre and gaining international recognition for it.His film Pather Panchali, made in 1955, was the first such film. In a poll conducted in 1992 by the magazine Sight and Sound, Pather Panchali was voted one of the ten greatest films of all time.These films offer a striking contrast to Indian popular films. They use understatement effectively, something totally absent in popular films.  There is a visual lyricism and a deep humanism that sophisticated cinema lovers the world over find intensely satisfying. Satyajit Ray made a number of significant films in the same moulds that have won for him and Indian cinema an international acclaim. His work provides a sense of the` preoccupations of artistic cinema and how they differ from popular cinema. Many of Ray`s films are readily available in videocassette. Satyajit Ray is generally regarded as India`s greatest filmmaker and, along with Jean Renoir and Vittorio de Sica and he is rated among the great masters of humanist cinema. Ray`s films, and indeed those of other directors belonging to the artistic tradition, are clearly quite different from popular films.
 A number of highly gifted directors are associated with the artistic cinema like Ritwik Ghatak, Mrinal Sen, Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Aravindan, Kumar Shahani, Mani Kaul, Buddhaheb Dasgupta, Aparna Sen, Gautam Ghose, Shyam Benegal, Govind Nihalani, Shaji Karon, Vijaya Mehta, Ketan Mehta. All, from their distinctive vantage points, seek to cinematise important areas of Indian reality. Adoor Gopalakrishnan`s film, Rat Trap (1981) has won many prestigious awards and in his film Face to Face (1984), Gopala-krishnan explores the theme of self and modernization, this time taking a different angle. Once again the style of the film follows the neo-realistic tradition.
 As we seek to identify the distinguishing features of Indian cinema, we need to keep in mind the main characteristics of its two main branches - the popular and the artistic. Both relate to the Indian reality and consciousness, but in very different ways. The techniques of popular cinema are largely shaped by traditional narrative, whereas those of the artistic cinema are Western in nature, largely neo-realistic. However, in terms of the experiences explored, the artistic films are much closer to Indian reality than the popular films, which are mostly fantasies. Various issues that are central to a deep understanding of contemporary Indian society find expression in artistic cinema.
 In most artistic films, all aspects of movie-production are deemed ancillary to the presentation of realistic narrative. Hence, camera angles are largely at eye-level; lighting unobtrusive; framing concentrated on the main action of a given scene; cuts effected at logical junctures in the flow of action. Popular cinema, which grew out of different roots, never felt a need to follow this pattern of Western filmmaking. The styles of presentation and techniques associated with popular cinema merit our close attention. Indian popular filmmakers, with their inordinate love for dramatic camera movements, extravagant use of colour, flashy editing, and self-conscious use of sound, depart significantly from the `invisible` style associated with artistic cinema. Indian popular filmmakers aim to create a different kind of film and narrative discourse. Indian popular film directors on the other hand do not conceal the fact that what is on the screen is a creation, an invention by the makers of the film.
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