Indian Indies

A Guide to New Independent Indian Cinema

Ashvin Immanuel Devasundaram

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• eBook ISBN: 9781000577174
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Film & Video

This book offers a concise and cutting-edge repository of essential information on new independent Indian films, which have orchestrated a recent renaissance in the Bollywood-dominated Indian cinema sphere.

Spotlighting a specific timeline, from the Indies' consolidated emergence in 2010 across a decade of their development, the book takes note of recent transformations in the Indian political, economic, cultural and social matrix and the concurrent release of unflinchingly interrogative and radically evocative films that traverse LGBTQ+ issues, female empowerment, caste discrimination, populist politics and religious violence.

A combination of essential Indie-specific information and concise case studies makes this a must-have quick guide to the future torchbearers of Indian cinema for scholars, students, early career researchers and a global audience interested in intersecting aspects of cinema, culture, politics and society in contemporary India.

1 In the beginning The birth of the new Indies

DOI: 10.4324/9781003089001-2

Overview

Filmmaker Dibakar Banerjee states: ‘We need cinema that takes on, head on, the issues of, according to me, racism in India, independence from objectification of women, independence from jingoism, national jingoism, jingoism of the Bharatiyata, independence from organised religion’ (Film Companion, 2021).

The emergence of a new wave of independent films constitutes a radical renaissance in contemporary Indian cinema. India’s new ‘Indies’ began to gain prominence and visibility around 2010 – a watershed year in their evolutionary trajectory. In the millennial decade prior to 2010, the notion of independent films created outside or in opposition to Mumbai-based mainstream commercial Hindi cinema – Bollywood – was certainly not inconceivable or unprecedented. However, the alternative films released between 2000 and 2009 were relatively few and far between – disaggregated, impeded by inadequate funding, intermittent exhibition, limited distribution and niche audiences. At the time, the prospect of positioning these independent films as potential contenders to Bollywood’s undisputed cinematic dominance was not given serious consideration. The release of several seminal Indie films in 2010, including Peepli Live, Udaan, LSD: Love, Sex Aur Dhoka, Dhobi Ghat, I Am and Gandu, gave credence to the conception of a bona fide alternative genre of independent films. Converging from the shards and sparks of sporadic film releases in the early stages of the millennium into a cohesive, consistent, cross-regional, multilingual, impactful and increasingly prolific film form, the idea of a new wave of Indian ‘Indies’ took root.

These Indie films were distinctly different from standard Bollywood blockbusters, displaying diversity of form, style and, most conspicuously, unconventional and eclectic content. An ever-increasing number of these films started emerging from across multiple Indian urban centres, revealing multi-dimensional sides of India seldom represented in Bollywood. Topical Indie film themes span gender-based violence, female-centric perspectives, LGBTQ+ rights, unregulated neoliberalism, predatory capitalism, caste-discrimination, child labour, human trafficking, religious fundamentalism, social and political repression of ethnic and religious minorities, economic inequality, state corruption, authoritarian law enforcement practices, and malfunctioning legal and judicial systems. In hindsight of a decade since their largely unobtrusive but silently revolutionary rise to prominence in 2010, the Indies are now a mainstay in the Indian filmmaking firmament. It would therefore be a cardinal error to continue the entrenched tendency, especially prevalent in western cultural perspectives, of collapsing all forms of Indian cinema and culture into Bollywood. To persist with this undifferentiating approach entails failure to take heed of the monumental transformations and paradigm shifts galvanised by Indian Indie cinema not to mention the decolonising currents in the global academy. Since their emergence as a new wave and increasing affiliation with the international web streaming distributive infrastructure of Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, the Indies continue to reconceptualise and reimagine Indian cinema. Indeed, the Indies have instigated Bollywood itself to refurbish, reorient and reassess its own conventional strategies and formulaic idioms of film form, style and content.

Spanning over a decade of the Indies’ emergence (2010–21), this chapter extends a condensed, contextual insight into the provenance and evolution of the Indies. It will appraise the multiple meanings of the term ‘Indian Indie’ to reveal some of the idiosyncratic and paradoxical characteristics of these new independent films. This chapter will identify the Indies’ links to other previous forms of Indian cinema, particularly the influential but short-lived Parallel cinema movement of the 1970s–’80s, itself heralded as ‘new wave’ Indian cinema at the time. Ultimately, the new Indies which are the focus of this book will be framed as a postmodern, pan-Indian and polylingual phenomenon, thereby highlighting the intrinsic diversity of this contemporary new wave of independent films.

Multiple meanings of indie: What are the new Indian Indies?

Films with alternative content and storylines that stand apart from conventional, predictable and melodramatic Bollywood song and dance romance and action extravaganzas are regarded broadly as ‘independent’ in the Indian context. Director of the independent film B.A. Pass (2012), Ajay Bahl defines the Indian Indie as a ‘reaction to Bollywood’ that ‘thrives on its non-confirmation of that style’, and therefore reflects the binary template ‘Bollywood versus Independent Indian Cinema’ (Bhambra, 2017). Indeed, Indian Indie films are often positioned on the opposite pole to Bollywood. Whilst this may be valid on ideological, conceptual, perceptive and thematic levels, the colossal expansiveness, innate diversity and interconnectedness of the multifarious cinemas of India call for a more critical, nuanced and less binary understanding of the Indie new wave.

One of the crucial considerations in any in-depth investigation of the independent new wave relates to the challenging task of defining the new Indian Indies. As shapeshifting, multifaceted, hybrid, fluid, flexible and adaptable films, the new Indies defy and destabilise attempts to compartmentalise them into easily predictable categories. The independent filmmaking sector in India lacks a dedicated funding, exhibition and distribution infrastructure. Filmmakers therefore are assiduous in seeking wider audiences and box-office success which determines their ability to create a subsequent film. In this sense, as will be observed later in this chapter, the new wave of Indian Indies is distinctly different from the previous ‘new wave’ of arthouse cinema called the Parallel cinema movement of the 1970s and ’80s. As children of the digital age cutting their filmmaking teeth in the crucible of globalisation, for the most part, contemporary Indian Indie filmmakers are keenly invested in the commercial viability, magnified visibility and marketability of their films. It is not uncommon for Indie filmmakers to seek the participation of a high-profile mainstream Bollywood star actor, gain the patronage of a Bollywood film producer or celebrity, or align with a mainstream commercial production house. On a conceptual level, semiotic use of the term ‘Indie’ in the Indian cinema matrix is therefore stylised, culturally specific, circumstantial and expedient. In the Indian context, the term ‘Indie’ does not automatically refer to films made outside the mainstream studio system or with independent funding.

Whilst acknowledging its variable nature when transposed to an Indian cinema context, the malleable term ‘Indie’ is nonetheless a utilitarian, accommodating and adaptable reference point. The idiosyncratic Indian conception and usage of the appellation ‘Indie’ therefore comes with the concept-level caveat that the signifier – ‘Indie’ must always be multiple, contingent, context-dependent, versatile and pliable.

Renowned scholars and film critics have adduced multiple monikers to 21st century Indian films that are not archetypically Bollywood. These terms include ‘hatke/multiplex’ (Dwyer, 2011), ‘urban fringe’ (Mazumdar, 2010) and ‘Mindie’ (Shedde). There have also been attempts to subsume the new Indies in appropriating and reductive nomenclature such as ‘New Bollywood’ (Gopal, 2011; Gehlawat, 2015), thereby denying the Indie new wave its own identity and agency. Following the radical turn effected by the cohesive and prolific emergence of independent Indian films since 2010, the term ‘Indie’ is now the commonly adopted generic signifier for the new wave of Indian independent films that have flowed with increasing abundance across a decade. Indeed, the accommodating and relatively unrestrictive term ‘Indie’ combines the specific Indian context of its usage with a vision of free-flowing, evolving alternative pathways towards expressing creative independence. This fusion of flexibility and specificity in the bespoke term Indian ‘Indie’ renders ‘Indie’ a suitable shorthand to refer to the new wave’s heterogenous contemporary melting pot of film form, style and content. Indeed, deployment of the functional moniker ‘Indian Indies’ traverses the timeline of their evolution since 2010 and has been visible in news articles (Verma, 2011), academic scholarship (Devasundaram, 2016, 2018), bespoke websites such as India Independent Films.com (IIF) dedicated to charting and analysing the new wave (IIF, 2021) and the film festival circuit (Raindance.org, 2015).

In adopting the title ‘Indian Indie’, it is imperative to distinguish between the western and Indian conceptions of what ‘Indie’ entails. Independent cinema in the west refers largely to films funded, produced and distributed outside the mainstream studio system, although even this western paradigm has been destabilised in recent years. In the contemporary Indian cinema context, Indie films are not necessarily or always created and proliferated autonomously from mainstream commercial production companies, exhibitors and distributors. This is a singular feature of the Indian Indies. Due to the lack of a dedicated infrastructural system to support the independent filmmaking sector, several Indie directors often have no recourse but to align with conventional or mainstream sources of funding, marketing, exhibition and distribution in order to bring their film ideas to fruition. This ‘privileged’ class of Indies benefits from relatively bigger production budgets which facilitate more polished aesthetics, slick production values, amplified publicity and wider exhibition and dissemination opportunities. Good examples include two foundational Indies – Peepli Live and Dhobi Ghat from 2010, which were produced by Bollywood star Aamir Khan’s eponymous production house AKP (Aamir Khan Productions) and the UTV Motion Pictures (now acquired by The Walt Disney Company India). This once again invokes the idea of the Indian Indies as spanning a spectrum – ranging from films that affiliate with mainstream production and distribution sources to films that are more ‘genuinely’ independent through autonomous and alternative modes of finance, creation and dissemination.

This stratified system is therefore punctuated by several Indian Indies that reject, circumvent or are unable to forge strategic alliances with dominant commercial conduits of film finance, exhibition, distribution and promotion. A range of Indies such as Harud, Gandu, I Am (all from 2010), Miss Lovely (2012), Kothanodi/The River of Fables (2015), Haanduk/The Hidden Corner (2016), Lucia (2013), Shreelancer (2017) and Village Rockstars (2018) are often self-funded, crowdfunded or brought into being via other alternative local, national and international sponsorship and co- production strategies outside the mainstream studio ecosystem.

Once again, this attests to the diverse types – a broad spectrum or even a tier-system of Indie films, under the overarching classification new ‘Indian Indies’. Essentially, ‘Indie’ in the Indian context is not always positioned automatically outside the orbit and influence of the dominant Bollywood industry. The foundational or determining criterion that distinguishes an Indian Indie from a Bollywood film is alternative, unorthodox, realist, radical or controversial thematic content. Film critic Anupama Chopra emphasises this dimension of the Indian Indies: ‘we’re not talking about finance or distribution, but content and storytelling. These films don’t adhere to the song-and-dance formula we’ve had for many years’ (Sakula, 2015).

Unlike Bollywood’s formulaic approach that invariably privileges escapist entertainment and economic profit, Indian Indie films can afford filmmakers a more autonomous personal vision and relatively uncompromising voice in relation to espousing both experimental and entertaining formal and stylistic approaches whilst representing unusual topical content. As the iconoclast of the Indian Indie filmmaking domain – controversial director Q (Qaushik Mukherjee) – asserts, ‘an indie is always an exercise to be free of any hostile or disruptive forces during the film’s creation’ (Dasgupta, 2012).

In a candid talking-heads documentary, The Other Way (Dasgupta and Sethumadhavan, 2014) shared on YouTube, an ensemble of new wave Indie directors including Q, Onir, Vasan Bala, Kenny Basumatary, Gitanjali Rao and Pawan Kumar demonstrate that the diverse definitions of Indie correspond to the intrinsically broad bandwidth of Indie films that range and vary in form, style, cross-regional provenance, budgetary, logistical and distributive resources. The commentators reveal the trials, tribulations and travails faced by aspiring and upcoming filmmakers. In India’s Bollywood-dominated landscape, alternative film creators often have to resort to DIY and improvisational filmmaking approaches, deploying outside of the box and off-the-cuff mechanisms and strategies to work around financial and logistical deficits. This invokes comparisons with the uniquely Indian phenomenon of jugaad – an everyday lived practice especially amongst underprivileged subaltern classes. As Amit Rai (2019) notes, jugaad involves the intuitive adoption of ‘workarounds and hacks to solve problems’, making the best of meagre immediately available resources and strategies to transform ostensibly useless objects into something workable and functional. The aforementioned independent filmmakers harness The Other Way as a self-reflexive documentary platform to reveal important information about the formative state of the Indian independent film sector in 2012, highlighting the need to experiment, improvise and innovate within mitigating circumstances and operate with a restricted toolkit to create ‘beauty out of chaos’.

There has been a radical rupture since the aforementioned filmmakers shared their insights into the often beleaguered infrastructural state of play in Indian Indie filmmaking, which had been hampered by elusive funding and dissemination avenues. This metamorphosis has emerged significantly through the entry in 2016 of Netflix and Amazon Prime Video into the Indian market, marking the general rise of more than 40 ‘OTT’ (over-the-top) streaming platforms in India by 2020. The two global web streaming leviathans have played a particul...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 In the beginning: the birth of the new Indies
• 2 Breaking Bollywood’s bastion: radical, refreshing and revolutionary stories
• 3 Confronting censorship: Indies and the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC)
• 4 Theoretical and philosophical approaches to the Indies
• 5 From multiplex to Netflix: Indie funding, distribution and exhibition
• 6 Essential Indies: concise case studies
• Conclusion
• Appendix: list of Indian Indie films
• Index