For specific Bengali-language film industries, see Cinema of Bangladesh and Cinema of West Bengal.

Bengali cinema refers to the filmmaking industries in the Bengal region of South Asia. There are two major film-making hubs in the region: one in Kolkata, West Bengal, India (Indian cinema) and the other in Dhaka, Bangladesh (Bangladeshi cinema).

The history of cinema in Bengal dates back to the 1890, when the first "bioscopes" were shown in theatres in Kolkata. Within a decade, the first seeds of the industry was sown by Hiralal Sen, considered a stalwart of Victorian era cinema ^[1] when he set up the Royal Bioscope Company, producing scenes from the stage productions of a number of popular shows^[1] at the Star Theatre, Minerva Theatre, Classic Theatre. Following a long gap after Sen's works,^[2] Dhirendra Nath Ganguly (Known as D.G) established Indo British Film Co, the first Bengali owned production company, in 1918. However, the first Bengali Feature film, Billwamangal, was produced in 1919, under the banner of Madan Theatre. Bilat Ferat was the IBFC's first production in 1921. The Madan Theatre production of Jamai Shashthi (1931), under Amar Chauduri's direction was the first Bengali talkie ^[3][4] A long history has been traversed since then, with stalwarts such as Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen and Ritwik Ghatak and others having earned international acclaim and securing their place in the movie history.

On the other side of the border, Mukh O Mukhosh was released on 3 August 1956, written and directed by Abdul Jabbar Khan, based on his drama scrip Dacoit, produced by Nuruz Zaman and Shahidul Alam, distributed by Iqbal Films and acted by Inam Ahmed and Zahrat Azra.

Two film industries[link]

Today, there are two Bengali-language film industries: the one in Kolkata, West Bengal, India (the Cinema of West Bengal, sometimes called Tollywood, a portmanteau of the words Tollygunge and Hollywood),^[5][6] is one of many centres for Indian regional filmmaking; and the other one in Dhaka, Bangladesh (the Cinema of Bangladesh, sometimes called Dhallywood, a portmanteau of the words Dhaka and Hollywood), is the mainstream national film industry of Bangladesh.

Early history[link]

Hiralal Sen is credited as one of Bengal's, and India's first directors. However, these were all silent films. Hiralal Sen is also credited as one of the pioneers of advertisement films in India. The first Bengali-language movie was the silent feature Billwamangal, produced by the Madan Theatre Company of Calcutta and released on 8 November 1919, only six years after the first full-length Indian feature film, Raja Harish Chandra, was released.^[7]

The early beginnings of the "talking film" industry go back to the early 1930s, when it came to British India, and to Calcutta. The movies were originally made in Urdu or Persian as to accommodate a specific elite market. One of the earliest known studios was the East India Film Company. The first Bengali film to be made as a talkie was Jamai Shashthi, released in 1931. It was at this time that the early heroes of the Bengali film industry like Pramathesh Barua and Debaki Bose were at the peak of their popularity. Barua also directed a number of movies, exploring new dimension in Indian cinema. Debaki Bose directed Chandidas in 1932; this film is noted for its breakthrough in recording sound. Sound recordist Mukul Bose found out solution to the problem of spacing out dialogue and frequency modulation.

The 'Parallel Cinema' movement of Indian cinema began in the Bengali film industry during the 1950s, and then gained prominence in the other film industries of India.

West Bengal film industry[link]

The contribution of Bengali film industry to Indian film is quite significant. Based in Tollygunge, an area of South Kolkata, West Bengal and is more elite and artistically-inclined than the usual musical cinema fare in India. In the past, it enjoyed a large, even disproportionate, representation in Indian cinema, and produced film directors like Satyajit Ray, who was an Academy Honorary Award winner, and the recipient of India and France's greatest civilian honours, the Bharat Ratna and Legion of Honor respectively, and Mrinal Sen, who is the recipient of the French distinction of Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters and the Russian Order of Friendship. The early nickname for the Tollygunge film industry, "Tollywood", was also the very first Hollywood-inspired name, dating back to a 1932 article in the American Cinematographer by Wilford E. Deming (due to Tollygunge rhyming with Hollywood) and went on to inspire the name "Bollywood" and other similar names.^[8]

Other prominent film makers in the Bengali film industry are Bimal Roy, Ritwik Ghatak, and Aparna Sen. The Bengali film industry has produced classics such as Nagarik (1952) The Apu Trilogy (1955–1959), Jalsaghar (1958), Ajantrik (1958), Neel Akasher Neechey (1959), Devdas, Devi (1960), Meghe Dhaka Tara (1960), the Calcutta trilogies (1971–1976), etc. In particular, The Apu Trilogy is now frequently listed among the greatest films of all time.^{[9][10][11][12]}

The most well known Bengali actor to date has been Uttam Kumar; he and co-star Suchitra Sen were known as The Eternal Pair in the early 1950s. Soumitra Chatterjee is a notable actor, having acted in several Satyajit Ray films, and considered as a rival to Uttam Kumar in the 1960s He is famous for the characterization of Feluda in Sonar Kella (1974) and Joy Baba Felunath (1978), written and directed by Ray. He also played the adult version of Apu in The World of Apu (1959), also directed by Ray. One of the most well known Bengali actresses was Sharmila Tagore, who debuted in Ray's The World of Apu, and became a major actress in Bengali cinema as well as Bollywood.

The pioneers in Bengali film music include Raichand Boral, Pankaj Mullick and K. C. Dey, all associated with New Theatres Calcutta.^[13] Other famous playback singers in Bengali film music were Hemanta Mukherjee, Manna Dey, Sandhya Mukhopadhyay and Kishore Kumar.

In the 1980s, however, the Bengal film industry went through a period of turmoil, with a shift from its traditional artistic and emotional inclinations to an approach more imitating the increasingly more popular Hindi films, along with a decline in the audience and critical appreciation, with notable exceptions of the works of directors like Gautam Ghose. However, even at this time, a number of actors and actresses enjoyed popularity, including Tapas Pal, Prosenjit, Chiranjit, Rituparna Sengupta and others. However, toward the end of the 90s, with the a number of directors coming increasingly into prominence, including Buddhadeb Dasgupta, Rituparno Ghosh, Gautam Ghose, Aparna Sen, Sandip Ray among others, a number of popular and critically acclaimed movies have come out of the Bengali film industry in recent years. These include, Unishe April, Titli, Mr. and Mrs. Iyer, Bombaiyer Bombete, Antaheen, etc. and signal a resurgence of the Bengali film industry. Now after 2000 their rise another group of actor (Jeet, Dev, Parambrata, Rudranil), actress(Koel Mallik), (Srabanti Chatterjee), Directors Anjan Dutta, Sekhar Das, Aniruddha Roychodhury, Koushik Ganguly, Atanu Ghosh, Srijit Mukherji, Raj Chakrobarty, Musicians (Jeet Ganguly). The latest films by Raj Chakroborty, Jeet Ganguly, Dev, Jeet, Koel are undoubtedly big hits, but they lack the quality of cinema, acting capability as an art and is mostly catered in view of the rural audience. Those kind of actors (Dev, Jeet, Hiran, Koel, Srabanti) are a big joke for art of cinema. Some of the film like Madly Bangali, Antaheen have truly depicted the image of urban youths.Sekhar das on the other hand took interest in the rural sections of the country and made his first trilogy 'Mahulbanir Sereng',Krantikaal' and 'Kaler Rakhal,'Mahulbanir Sereng' has been highly popular for its novelty of the subject as it portrayed for the first time the lives in the Indian forest.

The female director league from West Bengal consists of Aparna Sen, Sanghamitra Chaudhuri, Satabdi Roy, Satarupa Sanyal, Urmi Chakravarty and Reshmi Mitra.

Jahar Kanungo’s 'Nisshabd' made in 2005 has been critically acclaimed for its originality in the treatment of image and sound.

Eminent Sound Engineers like Anup Mukherjee, Dipankar Jojo Chaki, Bishwadeep Chatterjee have brought a completely different approach to sound design of bengali films. Sound is now considered to be a very important element of Bengali Cinema. Quite a few films are gathering international acclaim for the same.

The market for Bengali films has expanded to a 340-million-strong Bengali audience in Bangladesh, West Bengal, Tripura and Assam. The industry could truly flourish if films from this state have a proper distribution network. While around 50 films are produced in West Bengal every year, only 30 make it to the theatres.^[14]

Bangladeshi film industry[link]

The Bangladeshi film industry is based in Dhaka. As of 2004, it produced approximately 100 movies a year. The average movie budget was about 12 crore Bangladeshi taka.^[15]

Although the majority of the films made in Bangladesh are strictly commercial in nature, a handful of directors from Bangladesh have attained critical acclaim for their outstanding work. Zahir Raihan, Khan Ataur Rahman, Salahuddin, Alamgir Kabir, Amjad Hussain, Moshiuddin Shaker, Sheikh Niyamat Ali, Humayun Ahmed, Morshedul Islam, Tanvir Mokammel, Tareque Masud, Mostofa Sarwar Farooki, Sikder diamond are among those prominent directors. One of the first films produced in Bangladesh after independence was Titash Ekti Nadir Naam (A River Called Titas) in 1973 by acclaimed director Ritwik Ghatak, whose stature in Bengali cinema is comparable to that of Satyajit Ray and Mrinal Sen.

Bangladesh has been officially submitting nominations for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film from 2003. Masud's Matir Moina (The Clay Bird) was the first film to be submitted, and won a number of other international awards from the Edinburgh, Palm Springs, Montreal, Marrakech, Cairo and Cannes Film Festivals. Another internationally acclaimed filmmaker from Bangladesh is Morshedul Islam, who won major awards at the International Filmfestival Mannheim-Heidelberg and other international film festivals.

Exploring Avant Garde Literature[link]

For the first time avant garde Bengali literature i.e. Hungry generation movement of 1960s was incorporated into mainstream cinema by director Srijit Mukherji in his film Baishe Srabon wherein famous film director Gautam Ghose portrayed the role of a Hungryalist poet.

See also[link]

Bengal portal

• Cinema of the world
• South Asian cinema
  • List of Bengali films
  • Cinema of Bangladesh
  • Cinema of India
    • Cinema of West Bengal

• Eastern India Motion Pictures Association (EIMPA)

• • • Parallel Cinema
• Asian cinema
• World cinema
• actor cinema

References[link]

External links[link]

• Bengali Cinema
• TollyNewZ.com..A Portal on Bengali Cinema
• Bengali cinema at Calcuttaweb
• BinodonTV.Com
• Dallywood site
• History
• A Portal on Bengali Cinema
• bangla movie
• bangla Songs and Music
• Bangla Movies A database of all movies released in Bangla.

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Aparna Sen অপর্ণা সেন
Aparna Sen in 2010
Born	Aparna (1945-10-25) 25 October 1945 (age 66) Calcutta, India
Occupation	actor, film director, screenwriter
Awards	Cinemanila Film Festival - Best Film 1982 36 Chowringhee Lane Cinemanila Film Festival - Best Screenplay 2003 Mr. and Mrs. Iyer Mumbai International Film Festival - FIPRESCI Prize 2000 Paromitar Ek Din Karlovy Vary Film Festival - Ecumenical Jury Award 2000 Paromitar Ek Din Hawaii Film Festival - Best Feature Film 2002 Mr. and Mrs. Iyer Locarno Film Festival - Netpac Award 2003 Mr. and Mrs. Iyer Locarno Film Festival - Youth Jury Award 2003 Mr. and Mrs. Iyer Philadelphia Film Festival - Best Feature 2003 Mr. and Mrs. Iyer

Aparna Sen (née Dasgupta) (Bengali: অপর্ণা সেন Ôporna Shen; born 25 October 1945) is a critically acclaimed Bengali Indian filmmaker, script writer, and actress. She is the winner of three National Film Awards and eight international film festival awards.

Biography[link]

Aparna Sen was born in Calcutta to a Bengali family, originally from East Bengal (now Bangladesh). Her father is the veteran critic and film-maker Chidananda Dasgupta. Her mother Supriya Dasgupta is the cousin of renowned Bengali poet Jibanananda Das. She spent her childhood in Hazaribagh and Kolkata and had her schooling initially in South Point and later mostly in Modern High School for Girls, Kolkata.

She studied her B.A. English honors in Presidency College..

She met the Magnum photographer, Brian Brake, in Kolkata in 1961 when he was visiting India to photograph his Monsoon series. Brake used Sen as the model for what was to become one of his most well known photographs — a shot of a girl holding her face to the first drops of monsoon rain. The photo shoot was set up on a Kolkata rooftop with a ladder and a watering can. Sen described the shoot:

He took me up to the terrace, had me wear a red sari in the way a village girl does, and asked me to wear a green stud in my nose. To be helpful, I said let me wear a red one to match, and he said no — he was so decisive, rather brusque — I think a green one. It was stuck to my nose with glue, because my nose wasn't pierced. Someone had a large watering can, and they poured water over me. It was really a very simple affair. It took maybe half an hour.^[1]

Acting career[link]

Sen made her film debut at the age of 16, when she played the role of Mrinmoyee in the Samapti portion of the 1961 film Teen Kanya (Three Daughters) directed by Satyajit Ray (who was a long time friend of her father's). She then studied at Kolkata's Presidency College.

Later in life she would work with Satyajit Ray in several of his films, including the short Pikoo (1981) where she played the role of an adulterous wife and mother.

In 1965, Sen resumed her film career in Mrinal Sen's Akash Kusum which was later remade into a Hindi film Manzil starring Amitabh Bachchan and Moushumi Chatterjee.Later she also brought out the different nuances of a widow in Mrinal Sen's Mahaprithibi'. From then until the end of the 1970s, she worked steadily in the Bengali film industry, as leading heroine of the time. She acted in a number of Hindi films as well during this time including Imaan Dharam (1977) with Bachchan, Shashi Kapoor, Sanjeev Kumar and Rekha. Aparna Sen was equally successful in the mainstream Bengali films.Her chemistry both with Soumitra Chatterjee in films such as Basanta Bilap, Baksa Badal, Chutir Fande were loved as much as her films with Uttam Kumar in Joy Jayanti, Alor Thikana etc.

In 1969, Sen appeared in The Guru, an English-language feature by Merchant Ivory Productions. She would make two more films with Merchant-Ivory, Bombay Talkie (1970), and Hullabaloo Over Georgie and Bonnie's Pictures (1978).

In 2009, Sen appeared with Sharmila Tagore and Rahul Bose in Annirudh Roy-Chowdhary's Bengali film Antaheen. The film went on to win four National Film Awards.^[2]

Aparna as director[link]

In 1981, Sen made her debut as a film director with 36 Chowringhee Lane. She also wrote its screenplay. The film, about an aged Anglo-Indian teacher living in Calcutta, won positive reviews from critics. For her debut feature, Sen won the Best Director award at the Indian National Film Awards. 36 Chowringhee Lane also won the Grand Prix (the Golden Eagle) at the Manila International Film Festival.

She followed up this early success with several other films, notably Paroma (1984), Sati (1989) and Yugant (1995). These examined the feminine condition in modern-day India from different perspectives. She also starred in Unishe April (1994), the film by Bengali cinema's Rituparno Ghosh.

Sen's next directorial effort Paromitar Ek Din (2000) was a critical hit and recalled the success of her first film. The film explored the relationship between a divorced woman (Rituparna Sengupta) and her mother-in-law, played by Aparna herself. It won a number of awards on the international festival circuit.

Mr. and Mrs. Iyer (2002), was a love story set against the harsh backdrop of Hindu-Muslim sectarian violence in India. The film won a National Film Award for Sen's direction, and an acting award for Konkona Sen Sharma, the director's daughter. The film won more awards at the Locarno, Hawaii and Manila film festivals.

15, Park Avenue (2005) starred her daughter and the actors Shabana Azmi, Dhritiman Chaterji, Waheeda Rehman, Rahul Bose and Soumitra Chatterjee. The film deals with a girl (Konkona Sen Sharma) who is a schizophrenic and her relations with her elder stepsister, played by Shabana Azmi.

Her next film named The Japanese Wife (2010), stars Raima Sen, Rahul Bose and Chigusa Takaku. This film focuses on two women and is based on a short story by West Bengal author Kunal Basu.

Aparna has made selective films and in the last three decades of her career, she has made only nine films.

In 2009, Sen announced her next Bengali film Iti Mrinalini, which stars Konkona Sen Sharma, Aparna Sen, Rajat Kapoor, Koushik Sen, and Priyanshu Chatterjee. Sen's last Bengali film was Paromitar Ek Din (2000). First-time screenwriter Ranjan Ghosh has co-authored Iti Mrinalini. This was the first time that Aparna Sen collaborated with any film writer or became attached to the curriculum of a film institute. The screenplay of Iti Mrinalini was an assignment in the Screenwriting syllabus at the Mumbai-based film school Whistling Woods International.^[3] It was also a major first in Indian screenwriting whence any screenplay from any Indian film institute was actually filmed.^[4] The film is released on July 29, 2011.

Personal life[link]

Sen has been married thrice. Her first marriage, to Sanjay Sen, was when she was quite young. Her second husband was the science writer and journalist, Mukul Sharma. They later divorced amicably. Sen is presently married to Kalyan Ray, an author and professor of English who teaches at County College of Morris in Randolph, New Jersey, in the United States. She has two daughters, Kamalini and Konkona—who is also an actress—and two grandchildren.

Other achievements[link]

In 2008, Sen was elected into the International Jury of the Asia Pacific Screen Awards. The highly credentialed Jury, headed by a president of international distinction, determine winners from all nominations in each award category.

From 1986 to 2005, Sen was editor of the fortnightly Sananda, a Bengali women's magazine (published by the Ananda Bazar Patrika group) that enjoys equal popularity in West Bengal and Bangladesh. From November 2005 to December 2006, she was associated with the Bengali 24x7 infotainment channel Kolkata TV as Creative Director.

In 1986, the then-President of India bestowed the Padma Shri to Sen in recognition of her contribution to Indian cinema. Since then, she has received several lifetime achievement awards, and served on juries at film festivals around the world.

Filmography[link]

Actress[link]

Writer/director[link]

Further reading[link]

• Parama and other outsiders: the cinema of Aparna Sen, by Shoma A. Chatterji. Parumita Publications, 2002. ISBN 81-87867-03-5.
• Aparna Sen calls the shots (Women in Indian film), by Rajashri Dasgupta. Zubaan, 2009.

References[link]

External links[link]

• Aparna Sen at the Internet Movie Database
• Interview with Aparna Sen
• Profile at calcuttaweb.com
• MyBindi.com interview
• Rediff interview, 2002
• Rediff profile, 1999
• Rediff interview, 1998

Parambrata Chatterjee (pôrombroto chôttopaddhae) is a Bengali Indian male actor and director of television and films,^[1] who came to limelight after starring in the film Kahaani; starring along with Vidya Balan. His performance was greatly appreciated in the film.^[2]

Career[link]

His directorial debut feature film is Jiyo Kaka starred by Rituparna Sengupta and Rudranil Ghosh. ^[3]

Production Company[link]

Parambrata has recently launched his production company named Workshop with his long time acting colleague Rudranil Ghosh and industrialist Dipak Raha ^[4]

Filmography[link]

Chatterjee along with his co-star Vidya Balan celebrating the success of Kahaani.

Awards[link]

Bengal Film Journalists' Association – Most Promising Actor Award in 2006

References[link]