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South Asian cinema

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South Asian cinema

South Asian cinema refers to the cinema of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan and the Maldives. Afghanistan is sometimes included in this category, due to its geographical and historical assotiation with Indic culture, although it bears more close cultural affinity with West Asia and Central Asia in modern times. The region of South Asia bears close cultural and religious ties with the regions of East Asia and South East Asia, although the influence of Abrahamic culture and religion from West Asia means Pakistan bears moderate commonality with that culture too. Bollywood, of India's has occasionally been named the largest film industry in the world, but the regional film industries of other countries in South Asian film industry are also as large as that of some European countries.

The terms Asian cinema, Eastern cinema and Oriental cinema in common usage often encompass South Asia as well as East Asia and South East Asia. See also Asian cinema, East Asian cinema and Southeast Asian cinema.

The far east as a cultural block includes East Asia, Southeast Asia and the Indian subcontinent.


Styles and genres

The scope of South Asian cinema is huge and takes in a wide array of different film styles, linguistic regions and genres. South Asian cinema is particularly famous in the West for:

Popular South Asian cinema, as typified by the mainstream cinema of India and Pakistan, is usually centered around escapism, and thus often lacks more complex intellectual themes, political plots or tragic endings. This is gradually changing with economic development, as rural poor no longer make up the majority of the audience. South Asian art cinema in comparison has always contained highly acclaimed depth and style. Every film genre is present in South Asian cinema, although some, like science fiction and horror were up until recently, mainly intended for relatively small numbers of middle-class filmgoers, but are gaining popularity in the mainstream.

Regional industry

India contains many state languages which have film industires centered around them. Although Hindi is the official language of government business, its often-used dialect Hindustani is the most widespread language, and English is widely understood irrespective of region, the state languages are preserved for official use by different states in India, and many have as many speakers as an average European nation. Bengali cinema and Tamil cinema in particular are highly successful industries, Bengal having produced Satyajit Ray and Tamil Nadu having produced Santosh Sivan and Mani Ratnam, as well as many acclaimed films. Regional industries have also tended to produce a higher percentage of serious art film and political film. Pakistani cinema is mainly filmed in Urdu or Punjabi, Bangladeshi cinema is filmed in Bengali and Sri Lankan cinema is filmed in Sinhala and Tamil.

Indian cinema

Pakistani cinema

Bangladeshi cinema

Key figures of South Asian cinema

With the rise in popularity of South Asian cinema in the West, especially due to the twenty million Indian immigrants spread across the world, Western audiences are becoming more familiar with many of the industry's film-makers and stars. Some, like Satyajit Ray, who has been praised as the greatest director of all time by such luminaries as Akira Kurosawa, and who has often been cited as one of the three best directors of the 20th century, are legendary amongst film circles already. Some consider Satyajit Ray, Ritwik Ghatak and Mrinal Sen to be the formost Indian directors.

Directors

File:SatyajitProduction.jpg
Satyajit Ray at work on the set of Two.

Actors

Actresses

See also

Further reading

  • Contemporary Asian Cinema, Anne Tereska Ciecko, editor. Berg, 2006. ISBN 1 84520237 6


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