Content area
Full text
(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)
Introduction
On 5 October 1947, a small group of artists, journalists, documentary filmmakers, and clerical workers got together in Calcutta with the express purpose of forming a film society modelled on the cine clubs in Paris in order to promote the exhibition of and discussion on 'good' cinema among cineastes in the city. Their aim was not only to emulate the Parisian clubs in their conversations about films, they also wanted to launch a journal that would feature well-researched articles on international cinema and contemporary Indian film culture. In the next decade, many more such film societies developed around India. Six film societies (from Calcutta, Bombay, Delhi, Madras, Patna, and Roorkee) came together in 1959 to propose the creation of a national regulatory body called the Federation of Film Societies, which was established later in the same year. By the 1960s, film societies had spread beyond metropolitan areas to small towns across India. According to a report published in the Indian Film Society News in 1981, from six in 1959 the number of film societies grew to 23 in 1964, 111 in 1971, 169 in 1978, to 216 in 1981. By 1981, there were over 100,000 film society members across the country.1
In what follows, I offer a brief history of the film society movement, confined though it was to those who considered themselves film aficionados. Cineastes in India and abroad are familiar with the works of Indian film directors such as Satyajit Ray, Ritwik Ghatak, Shyam Benegal, Basu Chatterjee, G. Aravindan, Kumar Shahani, Adoor Gopalkrishnan, and Mrinal Sen. What is less well known is that all of them were associated in some way with the film society movement.2 This, however, is not the only reason why a history of the film society movement is of interest to students of South Asia. The movement, particularly during the three decades or so when it flourished, came to be marked by debates about the cultural and political role of cinema that were reminiscent of controversies generated previously over literature and theatre in the work of the Progressive Writers Association, founded in 1936, and the Indian People's Theatre Association, founded in 1942. This connection between the concerns of film...