Bangladesh Cinema and National Identity

In Search of the Modern?

Zakir Hossain Raju

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781317601807
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Ethnic Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Throughout the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, cinema has been adopted as a popular cultural institution in Bangladesh. At the same time, this has been the period for the articulation of modern nationhood and cultural identity of Bengali Muslims in Bangladesh. This book analyses the relationship between cinema and modernity in Bangladesh, providing a narrative of the uneven process that produced the idea of "Bangladesh cinema."

This book investigates the roles of a non-Western "national" film industry in Asia in constructing nationhood and identity within colonial and postcolonial predicaments. Drawing on the idea of cinema as public sphere and the postcolonial notion of formation of the "Bangladesh" nation, interactions between cinema and middle-class Bengali Muslims in different social and political matrices are analyzed. The author explores how the conflict among different social groups turned Bangladesh cinema into a site of contesting identities. In particular, he illustrates the connections between film production and reception in Bangladesh and a variety of nationalist constructions of Bengali Muslim identity. Questioning and debunking the usual notions of "Bangladesh" and "cinema," this book positions the cinema of Bangladesh within a transnational frame. Starting with how to locate the "beginning" of the second Bengali language cinema in colonial Bengal, the author completes the investigation by identifying a global Bangladeshi cinema in the early twenty-first century.

The first major academic study on this large and vibrant national cinema, this book demonstrates that Bangladesh cinema worked as different "public spheres" for different "publics" throughout the twentieth century and beyond. Filling a niche in Global Film and Media Studies and South Asian Studies, it will be of interest to scholars and students of these disciplines.

1 Methods in film historiography

Towards an interpretive history of Bangladesh cinema

DOI: 10.4324/9781315747590-2

This study investigates how cinema as a social institution functions in a post-colonial society, namely Bangladesh. In this study my attempt is to rethink the history of Bangladesh cinema in a new frame. This chapter is the first step towards such rewriting. The reframing that I propose here lays the foundation for an interpretive history of Bangladesh cinema that emphasizes change over continuity.

The project of writing a history of a non-Western national cinema like Bangladesh cinema encompasses a number of theoretical problems at different levels of its inquiry. As Philip Rosen puts it,

. . . the study of a national cinema would always have to be based on three conceptualizations:

1. . . . how a large number of superficially differentiated texts can be associated in a regularized . . . intertextuality in order to form a coherency, a “national cinema”;
2. a conceptualization of a nation as a kind of minimally coherent entity . . .;
3. some conceptualization of what is traditionally called “history” or “historiography.”¹

In the present study I attempt to articulate the three conceptualizations Rosen proposes. I work through these in a reverse order. In this chapter I deal with the third problem Rosen forwards: the ways to conceptualize a history of Bangladesh cinema. I shall address the second and first problems—conceptualizations of nationhood and national cinema—in Chapter 2.

The kind of history of Bangladesh cinema I propose here attempts to combine theoretical and empirical methodologies that are usually utilized quite separately in Film Studies. As I see this history as a discourse, it is certainly not a definitive picture of the past of Bangladesh cinema. This study is rather a portrayal of my interaction with the past and the present of this cinema. It represents the dialog I was able to build between the data I came across and my own discursive practices, my mode of inquiry and other histories and narratives of Bangladesh cinema.

I try to look at the cinema of Bangladesh in its entirety, from the production to the reception of films and their relationships and interactions with other social institutions and discourses. Therefore, I combine textual, intertextual and contextual analyses of this cinema. Here I attempt to delineate the complex role of cinema in constructing, disseminating and interacting with contested notions of cultural identity and national modernity for Bengali Muslims. I approach this cinema—borrowing the words of Moran and O’Regan—“as a series of different discursive constructions, . . . the discourses occupying a series of different institutional sites.”²

This history of Bangladesh cinema emphasizes discontinuities, recognizing that historical cause is non-linear and change is non-evolutionary. For this reason, I focus on a number of key film texts, institutions, personalities, trends and events in Bangladesh cinema history rather than imposing a linear model of evolution of this cinema. Situating these various “cases” and “moments” within a suitable theoretical framework, I intend to make visible what were either invisible or beyond the reach of simple continuities illustrated in most film histories produced in Bangladesh and elsewhere. This history of Bangladesh cinema that covers the whole of the twentieth century as well as the first decade of the twenty-first century, demonstrates that Bengali-Muslim middle classes within the nation-state frameworks of East Bengal/Pakistan and Bangladesh utilized cinema to define various identities towards forming particular kinds of “national” and/or cultural modernities.

I begin this chapter with a review of different modes of perceiving and thinking about cinema in various junctions of nation and modernity in Bangladesh through the literatures published on cinema during the last eight decades. I examine how film scholarship began here and why a trend of Bangladesh film historiography began as late as the 1970s and 1980s. I first critique the survey histories of Bangladesh cinema assessing their strength and weaknesses. In order to situate Bangladeshi film-historiography within the international practices of cinema histories, I then review the major ways of producing film-historiography in the West—looking at practices both for “Western” and non-Western/Asian national cinema. In this way, I clarify my position as a film-historian and outline the particular kind of history of Bangladesh cinema presented in this book.

Three discourses of film scholarship

Film scholarship is still an underdeveloped field in Bangladesh. Even today there is no well-equipped formal place to study cinema. While a few scattered attempts at film-making training are visible, Film Studies as such is largely absent in Bangladesh. Nowhere in Bangladesh is there a film institute or Film Studies department capable of delivering fully-fledged training on film production or film research at a contemporary global standard.³ Still, film scholarship has a long history here. Cinema has been studied here since the late 1930s through various informal means.

Film scholarship was published in Bangladesh as various kinds of literatures on cinema during the last eight decades. These literatures on cinema of/in Bangladesh—published mostly from Dhaka and in Bengali—record lively evidence of how the local population in a nationalizing and urbanizing non-Western setting appropriated this “Western” medium. These publications cannot be considered as academic scholarship per se. Because most publications on Bangladesh cinema make data presentations in the simplest manner, some are opinionated texts full of claims and without evidence. However, these works’ importance lies in the fact that, together, they established a vibrant forum of discussion on cinema in a society where cinema has largely been seen as mere entertainment that never can attract any serious, scholarly attention. Over the last eight decades, writing and publication on the cinema of/in Bangladesh took the shape of three different modes: popular journalism, critical appreciation and empiricist histories. Though there are some overlaps, these three trends of film scholarship developed in Bangladesh in a fairly chronological manner.⁴ The early mode—journalistic writing and publishing on cinema—began in the late 1930s. It continues today, in most cases to meet the everyday need of filling the pages of newspapers and magazines with popular items. The second mode—critical appreciation—started in the early 1960s and is most visible in film club periodicals and anthologies authored by film club activists. Empiricist research and historical works on Bangladesh cinema form a newer trend, with such works being published only from the late 1970s. In the absence of a well-developed institutional structure of cinema study in Bangladesh, these three modes of publication made possible a certain kind of film scholarship here. Below, I appraise these texts on cinema published in Bangladesh (and East Bengal) in the last eight decades. After analyzing two early discourses, namely journalism and critical appreciation, I move on to investigate how and when the trend of film-historiography began here.

Popular journalism

Popular journalism discourse on cinema was introduced in Chitrakala (lit. picture art), the first film monthly of the then East Bengal, first published in 1933, from the famous Rooplal house of old Dhaka.⁵ Before that, in the 1920s, a number of such film magazines, published from Calcutta and in Bengali, enjoyed a good circulation in East Bengal under British India.⁶ After East Pakistan was established, journalistic writing flourished quickly through a number of film magazines like Cinema, Chayabani, Udayan, Rupachaya and Chitrali, published from Dhaka, Chittagong and Bogra in the early 1950s.⁷Cinema was the first film monthly that also survived the longest among these cine monthlies. Fazlul Huq published this magazine first from Bogra in 1950, and then from Dhaka during 1951–1957.⁸ The Observer Group, publisher of the Daily Observer—a reputable English daily of East Pakistan and Bangladesh—started publishing Chitrali in 1953, the first film weekly of (then) East Pakistan. For next few decades it served as the foremost film magazine here. The Ittefaq Group, publisher of the widely circulated Bengali daily Ittefaq, started publishing another film weekly—titled Purbani—in 1965. During the 1970s and 1980s, it turned out to be a true rival to Chitrali in popularity and layout. Alamgir Kabir, one of the most able commentators of Bangladesh cinema during the 1960s to 1980s, noted the approximate circulation of Chitrali to be 80,000 in 1979. He claimed a figure of 70,000 for Purbani.⁹ In Bangladesh, even in the last decade, the total readership for the ten most circulated newspapers is less than 1.5 million¹⁰ and the circulation of the most popular daily is around 0.20–0.45 million only.¹¹ In the circumstances, the circulation figures of these two film weeklies (0.15 million in total) in the late-1970s indicate a popular trend of cinema appreciation fostered through journalistic writing. We also need to consider that these film magazines were well read, being shared not only among the members of a family but also their neighbours. Thus Chitrali and Purbani led popular journalism on Bangladesh cinema throughout the 1950s to the 1980s. A few other strong film magazines joined the band wagon—Jhinuk in 1970, Nipun in 1975, Tarokalok in 1982, Anandabichitra in 1986, Anandabhuban in 1996 and Anandadhara in 1998. The early 2000s saw the emergence of three new fortnightly magazines on cinema and popular culture: Anando Binodon (2000), Bionodon (2002) and Ananda Alo (2004).¹² Today, thus a host of such Bengali magazines (weeklies, fortnightlies and monthlies) on popular cinema and television are published and circulated in and around the cities and small towns.

All the national dailies in Bengali and English also devote one or more sections to gossip and news about the film and television industry, a trend that also started in the early 1950s. Quader has listed 17 Bengali and six English dailies in 1993 that were publishing a special “entertainment” section focusing on cinema and popular culture.¹³ Gayen and Bilkis found in a 2007 study that film reporting occupies more than 26 percent of the entertainment pages of four leading Bengali dailies.¹⁴ While the dailies have become important sites of popular journalism on film and television, magazines on popular culture are also well read, especially in rural areas. The 1998 National Media Survey placed two magazines on popular visual media, Chitro Bangla (lit. the pictures of Bengal) and Ananda Bichitra (lit. entertainment varieties), among the five most popular magazines of Bangladesh alongside three political magazines.¹⁵ In 2008, researchers found that three of the most widely read magazines in rural areas are those that are about film and television (namely Binodon Bichitra, Ananda Alo and Tarokalok).¹⁶

The popular-journalism mode of writing on Bangladesh cinema attempts two tasks. First, it reviews newly released feature films and, second, it reports on the overall situation or particular aspects of film production and, sometimes of film exhibition in Bangladesh. Alongside film reviews and reports on film production, the trivial happenings of film and television stars and other important personalities also cover significant space in newspapers and magazines. Thus the popular-journalism mode records anecdotes—at first sight insignificant events in Bangladesh film industry—that can be analyzed in relation to the larger context in order to illuminate larger questions, as is sometimes attempted in this book. The reviews, reports and anecdotes on popular cinema at home and abroad (e.g. Bollywood and Hollywood) still cover a substantial portion of the “entertainment” pages of the numerous Bengali and English dailies, as well a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1 Methods in film historiography: towards an interpretive history of Bangladesh cinema
• 2 National cinema and non-Western modernity: framework to study Bangladesh cinema
• 3 National cinema study and beginning of Bangladesh film history
• 4 Bengali cinema and cultural modernity in colonial Bengal
• 5 The Dhaka film industry and Bengali-Muslim modernity in postcolonial East Pakistan
• 6 Popular cinema: between nation-state and market forces in contemporary Bangladesh
• 7 Cultural modernity and art film discourses: towards a global Bangladeshi cinema?
• Bibliography
• Index