A Brief history of Cinema and Impact of Cinema on society

Name -            Vyas Foram Y

Roll no:  -        21

M.A.Part-2 -   Sem-4

Paper -             02, Ec-404

Paper - Mass communication and Media studies

Topic for Assignment    -A Brief history of Cinema and Impact of Cinema on society

Submitted To: Dr.Dilipsir Barad

  Department of English,

  Bhavnagar university,

  Bhavnagar.                 

Topic for Assignment    -A Brief history of Cinema and Impact of Cinema on society

                       Introduction

   The years proceeding the dawn of cinema in India were witness to the growth of musical dramas, the Paris theatre, the drama companies of Madras, and the Jatra in Bengal. Music, dance, song were an integral part of these performing tradition; this was the heritage of Sanskrit drama and later popular Folk performing traditions; such as the Ram lila, The Ras Lila, The Nautanki and The Thirukoothu.In painting the calendar art of Raja Ravi Varma and others was well-known and stage sets incorporated some of the design and color of this new art form.

      Cinema has become the most influential art. Form of 20^th century, from its marginal beginnings. India holds emient position in Film making in the world. Cinema was three simple means of mechanical recording preserving and reproducing moving visual images with the development of film technology, the art of cinema developed a language of its own. ‘Cinema’ and ‘Films’ are used inter changeably but there is a difference between these two terms. Cinema has specific means to create imaginary time and space, and utilization of these means defines how cinematic a Film is. Imaginary time can be created through movement by means of montage. Films are made of stories dance, music, drama, photography, painting, architecture and many other things that we call cinema.

     Among the numbers crowd that watched the first screening at Bombay’s Watson Hotel with almost Fascination was a photographer named Harishchandra’s Bhatwadekar .He ordered for a moving picture camera from London, and when it arrived took it along to a Gardens, and shot the match live. It is significant that the cinema had its beginnings in India almost at the same time as in the other major films producing countries. Indeed, barely six months after the first Lumiere Brothers cinematograph projected moving picture on to a screen in a perish basement, and two years after Edison’s unvention of the kinetoscope in New York. Just as Indian photographers and studies proliferated soon the introduction of the camera in 1840, so arrival of the motion picture attracted a large number of business people, artists and craftspeople into Films production and Exhibition. Photographers in particular took to the new enterprise with enthusiasm.

                       The pioneers: The Lumiere Brothers

   ‘The Cinema’ is an invention without a Future’ declared Louis Lumiere who together with his brother, Auguste, pioneered what was to develop into an international culture industry. The Lumiere brothers were the inventors of the ‘Cinematographe’, a compact and portable machine that with a few adjustments could be used as a camera or projector or printing machine. As professional photographers themselves, Cinema of photography; hence they sought to capture from a single a train to, in brief ‘actualities’ such as: the arrival of a train, ladies and soldiers on wheels. Like still photographs, these ‘living photographic pictures’ were no more than attems to reproduce reality.

                       Realism and soviet cinema

The cinema of realism climaxed in the work of the early Russian films-markers, especially that of V.I.Pudovkin and Sergei Eisenstein. Eisenstein was not only a prostatic films marker of the revolution but also a film theorist. His ‘materialist’ masterpieces, battleship. Potemkin, Ivan the terrible and others Pudovkin identified five basic types of montage: contrast parallelism, symbolosma, simultaneity and liet-motif .He developed theory of the interaction between shots variously called’ relational editing’ markers and theorists include Lev kuleshob, Vertov, and Devzhenko: a major concern of the Films makers of the early soviet cinema was ideology and the socialist state. Their films had the appearance of a documentary style.

                       Pioneers of Indian cinema

Dadassaheb Phalke

                One of the pioneers of the silent feature films in India was Dhundiraj Govind Phalke, a Bombay printer photographer, painter, and magician. It is reported that he was converted to cinematography when he saw the films, like of Christ, at a Christmas cinema show.

Only a few Scatterd fragment of Phalke’s silent films are extant .The overall structure of each films is forever lost, but the fragments show a fine pictorial sense and also remarkable a vast range of techniques including animation. He experimented with color, via tinting and toning for some of the other films markers of the ‘twenties and thirties’.

In south India as in most other parts of the country, the mythological genre held sway. The foundation for a flourishing film industry in south India was laid by R.Nataraja Mudaliar, a businessman trained in cinematography in poone. During the silent Era over a thousand films of various genres were made in India; however, only ten of them survive.

                       Types of films

1.  Commercial cinema

   It primarily aims at providing entertainment to the people .It includes the ingredients of popular cinema. For example, films like Sholay.

   2. Art cinema

 It is more realistic and relevant to the need of the people and society. National films Development Corporation provided institutional aid for the production of these films.

  3. Documentary films

 Documentary dramatizes an idea or therne.It uses the factual material in order to dramatize its idea tells its simple story in terms of human interests. Something also can be exhibited in schools, villages and labor areas through mobile vans so that a large number of children can take advantages of these films.

As Expressed by Goswami,

“Making films children is a harder task than making films for adults. The producer has to take great care at every step only the best should be shown to children.”     

                       Impact of cinema on society

    The Three terms ‘Impact’, ‘cinema’ and ‘society’ are extremely complex and much too comprehensive to take at surface-value. The term ‘impact’ is frequently used synonymously connotative meaning point to an long-lasting .A further complication arises when one realizes that an ‘impact’ can be weak, moderate or strong, that it can relate to the psychological and even physical.

      The term ‘cinema’ is equally complex today, with television, video, cable and satellite TV vying with each other to screen films on the small screen. Moreover, there are so many genres of cinema, each genera perhaps having an ‘impact’ of its own ‘Horror Films’ for instance, might have the impact of frightening viewers, and slapstick comedies of entertaining and relaxing them. The third term ‘society’ is an infinitely more complex phenomenon. The term takes within its compass all social institutions. How does one asses the ‘Impact’ of ‘cinema’ on such an all-encompassing phenomenon? For several decades now, ‘Impact’ or ‘effect’ studies have been narrow psychological studies  on the ‘effect’ of violence and sex in specific groups such as school children, college and university youth. Most such studies have been carried out in the United States. In Indian Institute of Mass communication New Delhi, conducted a ‘sociological’ study on the ‘cinema’.

                       Ethics of Cinema

    While censorship is imposed by the authorities and the law, the matter of ‘ethics’ is imposed by individuals on their own professionals like advertisers and public relations practitioners have drawn up ‘codes of ethics’ for themselves but journalists, film producers, radio and television broadcaster in India have yet to agree on a common set of ethical practices in their respective media professions.

The need for ethics in cinema and the other mass media arises from the fear that children and sensitive adults might be harmfully influenced by certain portrayals and action. Film makers must be concerned about the possible influence on individuals and groups of their artistic efforts. For instance the stereotypical portrayal of women and minorities in Indian Films could help to reinforce cultural stereotypes rather than roles in society. This is where ‘ethics’ comes in: a concern for sensitive’s in films mentis for family viewing; the insertion of pornographic sequences in Films have been already censored; the portrayal of excessive violence for is irrelevant and unnecessary; there is a long tradition of Indian films markers of plagiarizing Hollywood Films, something shot by shot. These Cloned versions are palmed off as original Indian language films.

                       The central Board of films certification

  The central board of films cancers is set up by the central Government under the powers granted it by the cinematography rules 1958. The board is headed by a chairman, appointed by the central more than nine members. Presently, there are offices at Bombay, Madras Calcutta and Trivandrum, with Bombay as the head quarters.

   A Films producer has, in the first place, to submit an application for a certificate to the per reel. The examining committed consists of a member from the advisory panel and an examining officer in the case of short film, while in the case of a feature films four members from the advisory panel and an examined must be complete in every sense, with the background music and sound effect duly recorded on the films itself.

                       Conclusion

      The popular attitude to cinema as a means of mass-entertainment has its origin in the type of films made up to the ‘fifties’ in India. As right from the beginning cinema in India was aimed at the lowest common denominator and became primarily concerned with providing entertainment. Even when well-known writers became involved with camera, they deliberately changed the quality of their writing .It is only in the last decades or so that intellectuals have begun and associating actively with the making of films and thereby raised the status of cinema to an art form.

As Roberge remarks,

  “While cinema is acknowledged as a disseminator of popular culture, the contributory role of the cinema in cultivating and also shaping culture is not acknowledged and is perceived as a mere instrument or channel”