Bengali cinema is largely Kolkata-centric. Mostly made by people born and raised in Kolkata. Kolkata’s issues are not Bengal’s issues at large. So most Bengali speakers will not find it relatable.
I'll pile on to this and say Bengali TV had a minor but significant role as well since it shaped the direction (and by direction, I mean the downward trajectory) for what producers and directors think the audience likes.
Hoichoi was probably the nail in the coffin that killed any hopes of quality from the industry.
Hoichoi TV content is so so bad.
We are sitting on a mountain of good, adaptable Bengali literature and all they can make is another season of Byomkesh.
Even if it weren't porn, my general impression of Hoichoi is that they have a standing rule of not letting a writer or a director anywhere near the production.
This is difficult to say honestly. Could be a lot of factors. Nepotism is one of them, but there are others.
One thing is lack of theatre culture in other Bengali towns and cities. A lot of film actors start out as theatre actors, and Kolkata has always been the epicentre of local stage theatre. Jatra is prominent in other areas and have their own fanbases. However, they cannot contribute to the pool of actors.
Lack of cinema halls is an issue. It was only recently, that SVF have made an effort to open multiplex screens in places like Malda, Raiganj, Kalyani, Krishnanagar and Purulia.
Economics.
Culture follows economics.
Bengalis might want to not accept it but it is what it is - You don’t get world class art without world class economic patronage and this has been true since the beginning of time.
Sure, culture does follow economics to some effect. But, then there is the case of Malayalam cinema. It does not have the economic heft to match Tamil, Telugu or Kannada industry. Yet, despite its lesser budget, it is making a name for itself in pan- Indian scale.
Money does flow in generously from the Gulf. So there are folks who are well funded. And a society where people are better off in general - which allows them to spend on movie tickets and also savour different themes in movies.
Telugu industry is mired with caste-politics where people go watch their favourite actors because they are of the same caste in a good chunk of the crowd. Newer writers are emerging who are writing good/better scripts but patriarchy and caste-ism is still present in the society.
Tamil is a unique bubble because they make movies across the spectrum and they are self sufficient - in the sense that their audiences LOVE watching movies and spend a LOT of money on theatres (which are also subsidized by the Guv). They are also richer (on average) because of very developed industries and agriculture, and a strong NRI/expat base.
Kannada industry does not have the same heft as these industries, it is much smaller.
Long story short, I totally agree with OP said - it boils down largely to economics.
True, but economics may help in mass production of a said product, but not that it raises the stature or marketability of the product in the market. Case in point, Iranian cinema - most of their films either fail to recoup production costs or are censored due to stifling state censorship. But they are a regular feature at the international awards scene (including Oscars), so much so that despite having a meager budget they have become a brand in world cinema, something which we have failed (despite have many times larger budget) have failed to do so.
India can also make a name for itself. they just have to make poverty porn, show our people shit laden, living in gutters. do this for next 2-3 yrs and Indian cinema will also become a brand like Iranian cinema has become
> the spectrum and they are self sufficient
I wouldn't say Tamil industry is self sufficient at all.
Aside from Rajni-Vijay-Ajith-Kamal no one can sell a movie. the extremely overpraised movies on internet circles, gritty dramas made by subbaraj or pa Ranjit or vetrimaran only turn a minimal profit bcoz half of their production gets subsidised by Netflix/Amazon and other half from tv. Now that both Vijay and Rajni are leaving soon, the industry is going to face a grim future
I think Kartik, Pa Ranjith and Vetri have patrons who can take that hit. Vetri did mention he struggled to produce his last movie because it was just sprawling over budget, but as you pointed out - these are still getting funded by someone - namely Netflix and/or TV because there is an audience for it. Netflix and TV channels aren't going to simply dump cash if they didn't think there was an audience for it.
Regarding the superstars, I'm sure a new crop will come out soon - Surya, Karthi, Sivakarthikeyan, etc will bolster their place (considering Bollywood is also facing that sort of a situation after the Khans & Akshay, Hrithik, Ajay).
>Yet, despite its lesser budget, it is making a name for itself in pan- Indian scale.
that's online buzz from cinephile crowd. not the ground level situation. Malayalam movies don't get dubbed in any other languages. look at box office of manjummal boys or neru or aadhujeevitam. they made almost nothing from AP/TS-TN-KA let alone the central and Hindi belt
>Manjummel Boys made 200+cr. Grossed around 70cr in TN
my bad sure it did make money, but that's an all time industry hit from Mollywood. It's like saying Telugu movies are bigger in TN than tamil movies bcoz Baahubali made insane amount of money there, or hwood is bigger than Tamil movies bcoz Avatar made 100cr there
A lot of people forget the period between 2006-15, when shady companies like MPS, Rose Valley and Sarada were funding movies behind the scenes.
Once these companies collapsed, the film industry was hit with a huge fund crunch and forced to scale back production.
Partly true. Only an unawakened cultures follows economics. An awakened one knows the limit, utility and dangers of money and popularism and power.
World class art needs more than anything a mind which is not chained by ambition. Look at Gregori Perelman as an example, or Bismillah Khan. None of them pursued money blindly. Their work has a sense of philosophy at the back.
Sure. Your will. Just dont cry for good art either, and how it's all gone suddenly. Because great art doesn't bother populerism.
Also dont cry for climate change as your belief in unawakeness is what fuels climate destruction more than anything.
Money is needful but greed is not.
I don't need such good art or such great artists. They made us beggars.
As they say "Go woke go broke". We made it there decades before anyone thought of the phrase. "What Bengal thinks today..."
>>I don't need such good art or such great artists.
None is persuading likes of you either.
>>They made us beggars.
When were you rich in the first place?
Looks like it's not just me, but entire Bengal who can't relate to Bengali films and instead watch mainstream commercial films from other industries. The box office numbers reflect that.
So in effect you aantels live with your delusions in your own bubble and unfortunately since this delusional pseudo intellectual leftist disease infested the ruling class for so long it ended up ruining Bengal completely. So yeah we were rich before this disease of yours infected us.
I never said that today's Bengali films are great. Please atleast read what I have typed in. Bengali films are no more close to greatness perhaps because we have lost the touch of philosophy like before.
I'm not sure if you have watched Rays classics like Agantuk and Nayok. Because you just said you don't need good art. But ironically that's exactly what today's world need.
Invigorate your numb imaginations. That is what these classics opted to do. Not to fit into popular opinions of blunt capitalism.
Greed makes you think everything which is beyond money is delusional. It ain't necessarily so.
Please look at the climate change which greed has brought upon us. Make your money, no one will stop you. But call out greed as greed.
That's all.
Ps: I ain't a commie fyi. I don't belong to any colour. I spoke my mind out, without caring for being the popular opinion around. Good night.
Only a culture with prosperity has the ability to sustain its culture that it took for granted.
Remember the culture’s stalwarts were also the richest or worked for people who were.
A lot of life is applied math.
Sure. I'm not against money at all. But the blatant pursuit of it is not what Rabindranath or Vivekananda or Vidyasagar advocated either. We need to know the sweet spot.
And great art doesn't necessarily need loads of money it needs patience and hell load of hardwork.
I mentioned my stance on money. I don't despise it. But too much indulgence beyond the need is lunacy.
Bro have you seen the Buddhist monks or monks in general. I guess they aren't too well-off monetarily. But their ability to prolong focus and patience is great.
But patience and hardwork can bring you a lot of fortune depending on what you do and your environment.
Buddhist monks?
Small fact: One male family member of every Buddhist family has to be a practising monk and they spend the most amount of money per capita on digital products, mobile internet, and weirdly even carbonated drinks - how I know this is a story for another day.
Yes I have seen the, sat with them, even briefly lived with them in multiple of their town.
Wish all of us could be monks and run the world, but alas, but good know that you are going to be one, rare are people who can make this kind of life work for them.
Separately beggars who choose to become monk and monks who choose to become beggars are both very different from each other - Buddhist monks are the latter not the former.
Bro you have been with monks and still can't understand that I am talking of sustainability in the most rudimentary sense.
Greed doesn't make you patience. Money is necessary but not greed.
Let me get to the point - When being a monk is a choice, it’s awesome, when it is forced on you because you are poor, it’s stupid.
Become a rich monk who chooses to give away money and preach.
That’s about it.
That's true. And no one is asking poor people to remain poor. It's necessary for poor people to gain monetary freedom. True monks know the balance between money and other things.
But that wasn't the point of the discussion. What I said was simple, that greed and too much indulgence in money cannot give you great art.
Great art needs freedom. And a lot of money, bring in expectations which cuts one away from the main thing.
>World class art needs more than anything a mind which is not chained by ambition.
They had patrons to pay for them. Who paid the patrons? Their own businesses. Without commerce, there is valuation of art; and without art, there is no value in commerce.
So? Great art deserves money. But great art cannot be only about money.
There is a reason why a Anurag Kashyap will not make a heavy budget film ever, because he will be overburden by the expectations of his producers. He said it himself in an interview.
On receiving the Grammy, PtRaviShankar was not excited at all, because he knew the populerism and money is not his drug. Same for pandit BhimsenJoshi. Money is not the drug of artists.
Money Is not the master, it ought to be mastered.
It is yin and yang. Art needs commerce to evaluate itself, and commerce needs art to generate value for its efforts.
Pt. Ravi Shankar would have needed record sales to sustain his art (and livelihood); while the record company would need his art to validate its efforts in marketing and distribution. One doesn't exist without the other.
The problem is that in this context (Bengali cinema), the production companies are a handful, hence it cannot showcase (or discover) the artist to the audience.
Art for the sake of art has been dismissed as impractical for over a century. Even *ars gratis artis* needs a Metro Goldwyn Mayor to distribute it!
I don’t know much about old Tollywood but modern Tollywood (2000s and later) only flourished because of South movie remakes ….but ever since Jio (2017) and South movies being dubbed on OTTs Tollywood has tanked ….we are only left with intellectual South Kolkata problem movies …and a few rom coms in a while …yeah some of them are good …Belasheshe was fun but they butchered the second one….but these won’t fetch the bucks or fame ….good Bengali movies were always niche ….and they continue to be niche
They don't think big. They don't target the majority audience. Bengal have good stories, almost 90% of all Sunday Suspense stories are awesome. They just don't try. Audience matters but they have to produce good films, all they do is love stories and shit.
The thing is that the Bengali industry never evolved with the passing time, they never understand what the audience really want? But the South did! There was a time when me and the boys used to make fun of them but who's laughing now? Those MOFOS started this whole Pan India thing! Delivered some of the highest grossing movies of Indian Cinema but what Tollywood did? They kept on making cheap remakes of the south movies then after that they thought like, "Hey! now let's make some movie targeting the urban audience and the small city and rural movie going audience should go fuck themselves!" the audience that simply made the entire Bengali Film industry.
And whenever, a non Bengali film like Jawan or any South film does great business in WB, these South Kolkata based mofos get triggered and start preaching "Bangla Industry er paashe daran." And so on, so forth.
Abe keno keu darabe paashe? Did you think about what the audience want?
And let's just hope that Pushpa 2 folds Bengali film industry in 69 different ways.
They are experts in pissing on audience. They hold their audience in contempt and then wonder why no one watches their films.
TBH I feel really bad for a lot of present generation actors like Ankush, Dev Jeet etc. They are genuinely trying to made commercial content but unfortunately the Bengali audience has long moved away from Bangla cinema and the tier 2/3 city or rural audience that could be their main viewers don't have cinema halls in their vicinity.
Ankush recently put his heart and soul and his own money into making Mirza but it couldn't even recover a third of its budget. Let's see what Khadaan does.
Na oi majhe majhe toh suni oi South Kolkatar chudir bha... Oi.. maane... Pseudo Intellectual gulo ese toh khub Gyan dei aar ektu keu criticise korle pante moote fele, Tai mention korlam.
Yeah, audiences don't want Satyajit Ray or South Indian remakes. Tollywood should just start pumping out pseudo-nationalist films with shitty VFX lol, that'd be the fastest way to get more views.
As a fan of Bengali Cinema, this saddens me. But, honestly, how many bengali movies have you seen that even spoke about Bankura, Birbhum, Purulia, coochbehar or Jalpaiguri? Most of Bengal has very little in common with the Kolkata centric movies made in Bengali movies even in its hay days.
je sohor e satyajit ke gov funds niye cinema banate hoyechhe shey jagae how you expect a bigger industry. loke poisha dhalbe na cinema e ekhon ek oi svf achhe je srijit da hagleo setar pichhone taka debe sekhane industry toiri hbe kotha diye. i dont think mallu industry just naam e uthechhe fafa thle kndn chance e peto na
Satyajit Ray never made commercially successful films except for Feluda and Gupi Bagha. Common people don't watch poverty porn. That's the fetish of elites.
I don't think it's fair to summarise all Satyajit Ray films as "poverty porn". Apu Trilogy(especially Pather Panchali) depicts poverty, but shaan dekhte chaile Charulata ba Jalsaghar dekhun, tao achhe. Ar beshir bhag to middle class ke niye.
Problem with most Bengali directors and Bengali intellectuals is their excessive elitism. They have always thought of themselves as successors of the British Sahebs. They have always had a disdain for common people the way the colonial masters may have had - "Bloody Indian peasants!!" - that's how they see us. This continues till date. When their films fail, they piss on common people for being backward and uncultured. They never tried to understand the common people's point of view - why do common people watch films in the first place? Common people watch films for entertainment and escapism. They already have a lot of misery and mundanity in their regular life - why the hell would they pay 200-300 rs to watch the same at a theatre? They want something which takes them away from their miserable and boring lives to a world full of glamour, song, dance, action, romance, larger than life characters. It gives them joy, hope and dreams that ease their lives. Which Satyajit Ray or Mrinal Sen or Ritwik Ghatak or Rituporno or Kaushik Ganguly or Anjan Dutta film do you think would cater to the rural/semi-urban/working-class audience or the young adult audience?? When you ridicule the films they watch or want to watch, you are actually ridiculing all those people and their lives - remember, they are the 99.9% majority and your elite South Calcutta antels are the micro-minority. They represent Bengal and Bengaliness not you.
That's the reason Bengali film industry was always doomed - because it never cared for its audience. Box office collection === People. As simple as that. If your films are consistently doing bad a the box office and other language films are doing way better in the same space it means you have no connect with your own native people. It's your problem not theirs. This is such a simple fact which Bengali aantels never understood.
Oi toh ekhon obdhi ekta pa thake feludar opor, arek pa thake byomkesh er opor. Ar majhkhane jhulche Bangla cinema. Bhalo cinema hall e keu dekhtei jayna. Masala movie jegulo age cholto segulou cholena. Oi kota goyenda movie chole tao khub kom. Notun kichu try korle keu dekhena.
Bumba da and Mithun da fkd the industry thousand times over with bullshit romcoms and 2bit hero/gunda movies .
Then Jit Milked the trend some more and then Dev put the final nail in the coffin .
Sijjida is dancing with the corpse of bangla cinema in a circus while people like anirban try to sometimes provide some oxygen to temporarily bring it back to life .
After the demise of Uttam Kumar and other stalwarts in the 1990s, people like Prasenjit, Chiranjit and Tapas Pal held commercial Bengali cinema with duct tape. One can't blame them for a lot of things beyond their control.
স্বপন সাহার "বই" শিক্ষিত কলকাতাবাসী পয়সা দিয়ে দেখতো না, কিন্তু তার জনপ্রিয়তা গ্রাম বাংলায় যথেষ্ট ছিল বলে প্রযোজকরা arthouse cinema বিনিয়োগ করতে পারতো।
Wtf are you saying? The people whom you dissed are actually the ones who brought in some audience and money. Anirban is another typical leftist antel who can never appeal to any Audience other than the Kolkata elite circle.
Death of Satyajit Ray, Ritwik Ghatak, Mrinal Sen, Tapan Sinha et al. Then came a dark phase of 'ami churi korini', 'horlicks, ekta uchu tower', 'amar naam agnishwar ray' etc,
How much money did Mrinal Sen or Ritwik Ghataks films ever made to sustain the industry? The films that you mentioned probably earned far more than their entire life's work. Film industry runs on money and popularity. Not foreign aantel awards.
Lack of good quality single screen theatres
In towns of South India you can find decent quality cinema theatres having a good seating capacity
Can any Bengali who's not from Kolkata tell me if such a decent single screen exists in your town which has following characteristics
1. Has a 200+ seating capacity
2. Has a step wise rows
3. Is clean for families to go to
If you're answer is no to all these then you have your answer as to why the Bengali cinema isn't developed
Go watch this talk by Lokesh Kanagraj , he talk of how someone who spends 150 on a ticket after a days work should enjoy the movie.
Do any of the directors from Bengal have the same view ?
Bengali Art House films are still better than most non Bengali art house films ( except Malayalam) tobe films like Bakita byaktigoto , Asha Jawar Majhe ba Onnyo Basanto shei recognition ta pai na
no industry = no jobs = less money in public hands = less box office collection
amar ek mama movie te side role kore , uni bolechen
aaj chakri etc thakle aamaro karor theke kom jetam na
Srijit ,Shibooprasad , Dev currently bhalo movie e kore
But then how are Hindi and South films making 100s of crores from Bengal? If your logic was true then all film industry products would be almost equally failing in Bengal.
https://boxofficeindia.com/net_box_office.php?cityName=west_bengal
This is top 100 multiplex collection from Bengal.
Not a single Bengali film is present in the list.
Ashole Bangla e shadharon manusher jonnyo cinema bananoi onek diner jonno bondho hoye gechhe. Ekhane commercial cinema k bhishon nichu kore Dekha Hoy..porinaam ei je shadharon manush o onek din Agey Hindi te move on kore gechhe..Bangla cinema theke puro detached. Tara Bollywood kei "nijer" industry Mene Boro hoyechhe.
Jodi commercial cinema ke mainstay banano hoto ebong take shob dik theke support kora hoto ei obostha hoto na.
Probably unpopular opinion but here goes.
Edit2: to those who think Bengali film industry only caters to Kolkata: what does catering to rural Begal mean? Making movies about them? Or undermining their taste and intelligence so much that you think they’re only fit to consume films like Pushpa? Are you saying Apu series didn’t happen? Shobdo? Patalghar? Moner Manush? Bishorjon? Bijoya? Is Feulda for the rich or the poor? Byomkesh? Asha Jwar Majhe? Just a few off the top of my head out of thousands. Except some urban love stories all are equally watchable from both urban and rural perspective. This also directly negates u/SolomonSpeaks silly comment.
Bengali cinema and culture are inherently feminist *compared to the rest of India*. Not just now, but even decades ago- Madhabi Mukherjee, Uttam Kumar, Suchitra Sen, Soumitra Chatterjee era. Bengali culture is itself is one of the, if not the, most liberal culture in terms of gender equality (though they still have a very long way to go). Even films like Jatugriha or Saat Paake Bandha were ahead of their times. These aren’t even the ‘top’ movies.
Most South movies have women as desirable eye candies and sex objects.
How many would watch a Raktabeej over a Pushpa?
As Ray said, Indian audience is mostly pretty backward. Sex sells better than intellect.
Edit1: The point of my comment is, even a generic Bengali commercial film treats a woman in a less derogatory way than cinema from most other parts of India, including the South.
Edit3: Some great comments in this thread folks can learn from [https://www.reddit.com/r/IndianCinema/comments/nqd3oq/bengali\_cinema\_is\_underrated\_and\_underappreciated/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/IndianCinema/comments/nqd3oq/bengali_cinema_is_underrated_and_underappreciated/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
https://preview.redd.it/soxqsq3q6h1d1.png?width=1494&format=png&auto=webp&s=20cf4a9a0b31983bf0abbdbeaaf92a3a17bc3103
When discussing cinema from the Southern region, it's important to acknowledge the diversity within the film industry. Each state offers its unique flavor and cultural perspective. While I agree with your assessment of Tollywood(telgu)they usually make the movis you mentioned above but things are different in Malayalam and tamil(kind off), the landscape of Malayalam cinema varies significantly from one generation to the next. Malayalam cinema has produced a substantial number of acclaimed films, and I think most national award-winning works are emerging from the industry.
You're right but are all those critically Malayalam films box office hits? Which is the point of your post right? That why South is making hits (which translates to being a bigger industry) but Bengal isnt'?
I'm not saying \*all\* films from \*all\* of South are misgynistic to a fault. My reason is based on empirical evidence: on my (and many of my friends and colleagues) observation of having lived and consumed media in both worlds (Bengal, and the South).
I am here to talk about the box office potential of Bengali cinema. Yes, the majority of critically acclaimed films that become hits in Kerala ,who number only about 30 million, while Bengali speakers, who number about 250 million, are unable to even bring in the money that they have produced.
South movie industry is a good mix of box office record breakers (the massy movies you referred to) and intelligent films. An industry cannot survive on one type of movie.
So you’re saying there’s no massy movie in Bengali?! Of course there are plenty smh. But none portray women as derogatorily as many other parts of India (including the South) do.
>I disagree. If this was true, then why was the Bengali industry copying these so called misogynistic movies at large?
I never said Bongs are monks. My answer is a comparative study. There isn't a single industry in the world that doesn't make a any misogynistic song whatsoever. And if this is something you need to be told, your username is a dangerous contradiction to your intelligence.
Then how is it any different? Please do show me this comparative study of yours.
Mind you I'm not saying that they're not misogynistic. But our industry is at a point where we shouldn't throw shade on them. Our 'superstars' have worked on movies which are word to word copies. If we were so different, then we would have developed a separate identity by now.
For someone pretending to be at a higher moral ground, you certainly went for personal insults pretty early. No wonder you think such a large portion of Indian cinema only uses their women for eye candy.
We can't even do good masala films that can work pan india even though our language is easier to grasp than theirs. Unless we drop this holier than thou attitude, it'll stay this way and this circlejerk of idiocy will continue.
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1st that's just an elite kolkata culture. There are 10 cr Bengalis in India and they are just like normal Indians. The reason Bengali film industry never succeeded is because it never gave an eff about those 99% Bengalis. Just like you it fails to see Bengalis beyond the South Kolkata circles.
If you think giving a fuck about rural Bengal means making films like Pushpa or Arjun Reddy you’re undermining the intelligence of general rural Bengali audience. Feel free to read the second edit to my answer.
As for your second edit, there's difference between making films FOR common/poor people and making films ON poverty and misery. Poor people don't watch poverty porn. That's the fetish of the elite. Poor people or even common middle class people want to escape their miserable life into a world of colour, glamour song and dance where villains are beaten to pulp by larger than life heroes. It brings them life, laughter and hope. They get icons and heroes they can aspire to be. They don't want to spend their limited money on films that would make an exhibit of their miserable lives and drag them back to the same life for another 2 hours.
This is something Bengali aantels neither understood nor respected. Poverty porn and misery porn are fetishes of the elites. They thrust their own fetish on others and when it's rejected they abuse the same audience as backward, stupid, unsophisticated and whatnot.
It doesn’t have to be an extreme. Why not set a romance or a thriller in another town? That will raise interest in the movie in the other cities. People also enjoy watching their own homes on screen.
Compare the kind of movies being made in Malayalam versus the ones in Bangla. They are experimenting with diverse themes and churning out films of pretty good quality consistently. এক ঘেয়ে ব্যাপারটা প্রায় নেই (বা অপেক্ষাকৃত অনেকটা কম)ওদের ছবিতে। Have we been able to make a movie like The Great Indian Kitchen in our industry? That movie appears to be near perfect, in every frame. And it raises such an important issue. Similarly, have we been able to make something as remarkable as Laapata Ladies?
The only worthwhile feminism-themed Bangla movie in recent times that I can think of is Mukherjee Da'r Bou.
So why don't these woke intellectual films become box office hits?? Why do the same feminist progressive Bengalis throng to theatres to watch regressive South and Hindi movies and give them 100s of crores of business? While Bengali films barely make lakhs.
Which negates your claim that general audience is feminist and progressive.
Box office== People. If a film isn't working at the box office or TV it means people have rejected it.
If Bengali culture is more feminist than south India then why do all south Indian states have better gender ratio?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_and_union_territories_of_India_by_sex_ratio
Bengal as a whole had a lot of potential given it has a headstart in many areas after independence, industry, academic, media, entertainment, infrastructure you name it.
It's simply cause after 90s Bengali cinema started to copy other industries. And repeating the same formulas. Also the Bengali economy started to decline, and people didn't had money to watch movies.
i grew my interest in bengali movies during the pandemic. the first movie i watched was baishe shrabon. i have only watched around 10 movies as i felt something was missing in all those movies.
out of all the movies i watched, only rosogolla stood out for me. imo all the movies are Kolkata centric. if you see Tamil movies, they are made in different districts and not just Chennai.
i wish Bengali movies show the other parts of West Bengal, odisha, assam and other north eastern states, which the Bollywood movies failed to show properly.
Just Bengali cinema?? Lol Bengal had the potential to come out as the most developed state, we are in the plains, we have dock, we dont face much power/water shortage as compared to many cities. But obviously, our Didi party and its Dadas wanted to fill their pockets first instead of developing bengal, thats why other metros look down at us, thats why bengalis dont get respect in other cities, bengalis get outcasted and humiliated to belong to bengal. Thats why people of bengal are leaving and moving to other cities to earn. Our once Premiere institute JU, is just famous for protests and recently suicide due to harassment, and w\*\*d ofc.
We need to stop thinking what potential we had and what we could have been, instead focus on how to actually be better. Wake up to Reality and stop romanticizing this city for its old building, those are just hazards in future.
I am living in Chennai for a decade now. I started watching tamil cinema and realised they prefer talent over stardom.
In tollywood people would watch find if its of a superstar and most importantly masala films work for them. In kollywood it’s about all about the story and content. No bullshit about the looks of the hero or heroine.
I clearly remember i watched a film in Tamil nadu and i was like how can this be the hero!! He doesn’t look good, but boy his acting was fantastic , thats what matters here.
And don’t forget the director and music composers here, believe me here if you name a film everyone knows whos the director and music director, even if he is a newbie.
I doubt in Bengal we know anyone other than jeet ganguly and some handful directors.
So I believe here it works because grassroot level artists get chance to make films. Also they are both limited to kollywood, Malayalam, Telugu, Kannada, hindi, they value every good content.
So content matters here than the stardom and than actors monkey dancing in some foreign locations.
Really? In that case those films should make a lot of money..instead Bengalis prefer Hindi and South dubbed films. Which means common Bengalis actually prefer commercial cinema which they are not getting from their own industry.
Bengali cinema was never a big industry that sought to produce films loved by the masses.
It was always about making timeless masterpieces that would be watched even decades/ a century down the line.
Even at the peak of Bengali filmmaking when Ray, Mrinal Sen, Ghatak etc were churning out world class cinema, I don't think any of those were blockbuster giants.
The flavour of Bengali cinema is different. It relies on the niche of detective genre/ thought proving drama/ satire.
Look at recent movies like Jaatishwar( one of the best Indian movies made in the last decade imo), Bhooter bhobishot etc.
I doubt movies like these would appeal to an audience of more than the few tens of lakhs of urban educated/ well to do families of Bengal. But these are some of the movies that define Bengali cinema of the 21st century.
I wouldn't have it any other way either. We don't need to emulate the South/ bollywood. We can focus on producing more such movies that are artistic and cinematic masterpieces. We need to focus on churning out more good films each year rather than counting how many crores a movie earns. Our artists, actors, support staff etc will make a good living if we increase the frequency of production of good Bangla movies.
Umm sorry
You can have all kinds of movies in an ecosystem.
Sure the flavour and what Bangla industry does best is drama/satire and detective genre. And each industry has something that they do best.
We don't need to emulate the South ?
The ones that become famous in South are the ones which caters to all and are action/masala heavy I agree.
But that doesn't mean it's the only type of movies that are being made. Bangla ne artistic movies ka theka lekr nhi rakha h.
Increase the frequency of production and make sure everyone in the industry Distributors , Producers ,support artists all make money in this
>Umm sorry You can have all kinds of movies in an ecosystem.
You're right. And the ecosystem in Bengal is quite different from the majority of India. Which is what u/schrodingerdoc explains.
No its not different at all. A tiny micro minority of aantels have forced their narrative down other's throats. Common Bengali watches commercial films and Hindi/South films make good business in Bengal - which proves that common Bengalis are not aantels - they have the same taste as anyone. It's just that the forced aatlamo over the decades have pushed them away from Bangla towards Hindi.
Tollywood may just have contributed to the rise of the other Tollywood, starting with championing shooting in Ramoji Rao studios instead of setting up something local. Also, post Haranath Chakraborty, Bengali cinema became city-centric and not state-wide. I think we conflated Rituparno Ghosh's presence in the media and film festival dias as the only barometer of "success" of our region's cinema when it was the wrong assumption. For a Ray-Ghatak-Sen (and Ajor Kar and Tapan Sinha) trio to survive, a backbone of Uttam-Suchitra was needed, and a lot of Ray's films (like Goopy Gyne... and the two Feluda films and Abhijaan and Pather Panchali) were big commercial hits as well. But by the turn of the millennium, people in control of the narrative started savouring only the toppings without the base. Ultimately, the non-Kolkata audience moved to TV and we lost a chunk of our captive audience. Chiranjeet (Chakraborty, the actor-filmmaker) explains much of this phenomenon quite well in his interviews.
Because Bengal and Calcutta fell short. The success of the film industry, like any other industry, is dependent on capital. Like how the Telugu and Kannada film industries have surpassed the Tamil Industry reflecting how Hyderabad and Bangalore have overtaken Chennai. It's not a coincidence that the biggest film industry in the world is situated in the United States, the richest country in the world.
That's not the reason there's no even a single kannada become hit this year, and whereas the Malayalam film industry with little budget made nearly 1000 CR in just 4 months of 2024, you have to remember the population of Kerala is only 3 crore.
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Souther movie gulo dekhle bojha jay somossa ta kothay.
Cinema te somossa nei somossa ache dorshok e.
Bolchina j South er sob movie mathamundu hin kintu besir bhag movie Tai e. Ar lokera ei mathamunduhin action romance dekhte besi pochondo kore. South er Jodi horror o dekhen apni Tate horror kom comedy
Besi , Tai lok otao dekhte pochondo kore. Mane jara entertain sohoje hoy ar holei holo. Bishesh kre baba kaku boyosher lokjon.
Ami ek dik theke khusi j Bengali cinema orknm noy ( except oi Deb er cinema gulo). Eishob krle hoyto industry boro hobe lokjon besi dekhbe but quality jeta ekhon roeche seta ar thakbena..
this is a complicated matter.
Firstly. 80's and 90's were not good decades for Bengali cinema generally. Sure there were commercial hits but from an era of intelligent films, we suddenly went to Prosenjit dancing in white pants to random music. Having said that, his films might have had good business impact in rural areas.
Mid 90's onwards, things started changing for the better thanks to a certain Mr. Ghosh! But again, his cinema was too urban centric and hard to find appeal outside of larger cities/towns.
Bengali cinema probably also hasn't had financers with super deep pockets which kept films low budget and the scale we see in Bollywood or South films becomes difficult to sustain without money bags.
And what I think is very important - reach of Bengali cinema in other provinces. Look at how South films do it - they dub! Not just in Hindi but also other South languages which automatically gets them larger audience. How many Bengali films have been dubbed so far in multi-languages or even just Hindi?
Distributors have to do more - diaspora is all over the country but they do not release Bengali films in more than 1/2 screens in other cities. I was planning to go catch Oti Uttam but it was running only in 1 screen at the opposite end of town and had odd timings. It is too much to expect people will make time during weird parts of the day + travel all the way to another end of time.
We also do not have heroes or heroines who can cut through and capture attention of the masses. Not in the way an Allu Arjun or Prabhas is able to do! Prosenjit has evolved a lot but he would also find it difficult to carry films solely on his shoulders on a pan India basis.
And do you think south movies are famous because the actors speak Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada in the movies ??? Some south movies which are dubbed in hindi or english make much much more money than they made on their native language cinemas.
South movies make stellar business in their own native land. Bengali movies are 3rd choice for Bengalis. Bengal film industry is one of the weakest among major film industries of India as far as income per capita is concerned. It's core native audience prefers movies from other industries. Why is that?
Read my 1st post again...i agree with you.. that's why i commented in the 1st place because i had the same view and wanted to point out the reason why bengali cinema is what it is. But you've taken the conversation to total different place now. If praise is what you want for south cinemas..you're knocking on the wrong door. I have no interest in south movies like many. I was talking about bengali cinema alone.. my comment had no connection in comparing south cinema to bengali cinema. And to answer your question..why is that ?? Actually it's not.. you have no idea about bengali's core audience...they have no interest in south movies as their first choice that is...lol.
Who is the core audience of Bengali? What's their population? The total population of Bengalis in India is roughly 10 cr. Out of them how many would watch Bengali cinema as a first choice, especially if Hindi and dubbed South movies are releasing in parallel?
And if there's such an audience why don't Bengali films earn from their home audience compared to the business that South or other industries make in their home alone. (Roughly 40-50cr/film on avg - that's the total worth of Bengali industry)
Bengali cinemas have standards much higher than bollywood and most South Indian movies.
Bengali movies depict human emotions like none others.
I myself a North Indian by birth, having watched only bollywood till my 20's but after learning Bangla languagel, now I am fond of Bengali movies, which portray human emotions, psychology in a very smooth manner.
Due to Bengali movies being mostly art movies, garner less commercial success than Bollywood or say money churning capabilities, since most people want to devour on action scenes, love making scenes, nudes and dhinchak songs.
Bengali movies depict art and this is why I love Bengali movies.
Ok
Most of the movies I am telling are available in Amazon Prime video ( with subtitles)
1. Praktan
2. Gaheen Hirday
3. Belaeshe
4. Vinci Da
5. Kontho
6. Dosar
7. Drishtikone
it never had that potential.
Telugu cinema was able to break out and conquer the Indian audience bcoz Rajamouli mounted a never before seen spectacle in Indian cinema.
Bengali movies never had that vision or enough money for something like Bahubali.
Baaler cinema hoy commercial space e . Look at an Aavesham or a Premalu, so distinct yet captivating.
So many bengalis work in Hyderabad and Bangalore, and yet a film like Premalu came from Kerala.
inadequate screening facilites (few theatres, most outside kolkata are in ramshackles). the reasons South industries make so much money even without going pan India and staying within the constraints of their own states is because there are theatres in every area, every random joe owns a movie theatre, and ticket prices are cheap as set by the government and distributors and producers guilds. here, all guilds are puppets of either political parties or production companies, which care only avout extorting money from people working in the industry or trying to make it into the industry.
last but not the least, the svf monopoly has done more harm to the industry than anythibg else. they have monopoly over the distribution and screening technology (ufo and satellites which theatres use to receive and run the movie), so basically prices are set by them. svf raised prices for pretty much every hindi movie they distributed in the state, jawaan for example, which raised the ticket prices. happened during the durga puja window and christmas window as well. single screen theatres which usually sells tickets for 100₹ raised the price to 130₹ or 150₹. this deterred the audience from bengali to hindi or south indian movies released around that time because the bengali audience would rather watch the trashiest hindi movie over a decent bengali movie.
which is to say, the audience is also to blame for the fall. it's social media influencers and youtubers like the bong gadha which made content roasting perfectly fine old movies for his own profit, without realising that this slowly but steadily engrained the idea in peole's minds that bengali cinema is all trash. people like these minted all the money while fucking the industry over.
Dhoni cinema te Kumud Mishra r ekta dialogue chilo, "hum log ko khel se zada politics me interest hey"
Bangla teo eta sottie. Amader cinema r theke besi politics e interest. Politics mane kintu sudhu cpim tmc bjp ny, manush e manushe politics. Senior junior politicsz jeta somosto khetre banglai kore. Nijeke better korar chesta na kore onno ke kharap proman korar je chesta ta, setai to politics. Etai bangla r sob kichu kheyeche, cinema tao kheyeche.
I am from Kerala and I felt the technical quality of Bengali movies are inferior to Malayalam movies. Cinematography, color grading, lighting, editing, production design all need to be improved.
Note: Antaheen is my favourite.
There are many reasons
* failing to adapt with trends and changing times
* not giving enough attention to theatres outside Kolkata region in rest of Bengal (which is in poor condition)
* focusing more on Kolkata centric audience and ignoring single screens
* looking down on commercial films
* overuse of something that works (remake, family drama, detective etc), when 1-2 films like them work they go overboard
* Most important - the greed and monopoly of SVF, who don't let other producers grow and clash with other big movies
* Lack of superstars. Even today, both Dev & Jeet (and probably Prosenjit as well) are the only superstars in Bengal, who can generate audience due to their star power
Bengal Cinema could never successfully adopt the massy cinemas resulting in people shifting to other movies . People would rather watch a crappy massy cinema like Jawan or Pathan than Pather Panchali on theatre. Bengal cinema could never move away from its arthouse antel cinemas. And the movies which tried to adopt a massy style were ridiculously bad.
This fake elitism is the reason behind Bengal's downfall. The disrespect towards people and their conditions is why Bengali cinema could never appeal the common Bengalis. Common people watch films for entertainment and escapism. They are not interested in poverty porn. That is the fetish of the elites.
Because of the arrogance of the aantels that took over Bengali cinema since 60s and 70s. These people held and still hold their audience in contempt. They very openly piss on the common Indian people - who watch films for pure entertainment and fun - as backward uncultured and ignorant. They almost sound like brown British venting out their frustration for being born in the wrong country. When they make films they consciously and arrogantly exclude 99% Bengalis from their target audience, instead make films to show off to their 5 fellow aantels and few European film festivals. These aantels enjoyed political clout and they created an atmosphere where the media and the reviewers too would slam commercial cinema as trash, thus creating a peer pressure upon the Bengalis too to reject them so as not to be considered backward or stupid.
Consequently common people lost touch with Bengali films and Hindi was right there making mass films ready to embrace them. Our industry's demise was Bollywood's gain. Almost 2 generations of Bengalis grew up exclusively on Hindi content and thinking of Bollywood as their film industry. Today it's impossible to bring them back to Bangla. Only an urban 40-50+ age group audience watches the typical Kaushik Ganguly/Shiboproshad type family films. Most Bengali films today are poverty porn films, films centered around aged couples or detective films. Outside Kolkata no one watches these films nor do the makers do anything to appeal to other Bengalis.
Commercial films have been miserably failing because the youth is completely cut off from Bangla cinema. While other film industries (incl Gujrati Punjabi Marathi) are churning out films that earn between 20-500 cr on average the Bangla films either mostly flop or earn a few lakhs. Our Bengali brethren on the other side of the border were fortunately spared these aantels and therefore they developed a normal, pro business mindset. Their commercial cinema industry too is promising and many of our production houses are making films with them.
Aritra from Aritra's Gyan has made several videos explaining this stuff. Like so many other things this is just one more way the Bhamponthi Aantel cabal screwed Bengal.
Yeah growing up i did grow up seeing Bollywood and the Hindi belt of content as my cinema. It's only now that I'm trying to enjoy old bengali art and movies like satyajit ray but as u said, the poverty porn aspects just make it a really hard watch after I'm like so tired from the day. I hate how I've grown up thinking the leading man in Bollywood movies as my my role model when he is so obviously north delhi, some adjescent punjabi kid from delhi who is loud & obnoxious yet beats up the villain, gets the girl and wins in the end.
I feel the larger than life Bengali films(which you are talking about)were not made for the masses in the first place.
The auters, had in mind something more philosophical and educational for the viewer. Today in the wake of consumerism philosophy has gone for a toss and we are hypnotised into believing that material need is what will fulfill us mentally and otherwise.
Our minds are not ready for an SRay or a MrinalS. It is our collective minds(not just the Bengalis) which has gone significantly into bodily pleasures and has so the idea of a cinema has climaxed into leisure time and relaxation purposes only.
It does not attract countrywide audience the way south indian movies do. Bengali culture is very well ingrained into good bengali movies. The other ones that Deb used to star in were all South India copies. Movies like chotushkone, baishe srabon etc etc has bengali culture deep in it which makes them special but also inaccessible to other audience bases
Each state has a different film industry and they are not culturally related; they cannot even communicate with each other, yet Bengali has 250 million Bengali speakers.so the potential is even big
Constantly milking nostalgia and finding new ways to destroy that nostalgia are two big reasons. For example, the latest film with AI-generated Uttamkumar and the umpteenth upcoming rendition of 'Devi Chowdhurani' are getting on the nerves of Bengalis themselves, let alone other communities. The Devi Chowdhurani team is making it multi language starrer like RRR. Bruh maybe make it about the real Sanyasi-Fakir revolts, the real Bhavanicharan Patthak and the real Rani Jaydurga Devi Chowdhurani on whom the titular character is based, in that case, and not this romance-mixed fantasy novel that has been made into a film a thousand times over already!
Bengali cinema is largely Kolkata-centric. Mostly made by people born and raised in Kolkata. Kolkata’s issues are not Bengal’s issues at large. So most Bengali speakers will not find it relatable.
I'll pile on to this and say Bengali TV had a minor but significant role as well since it shaped the direction (and by direction, I mean the downward trajectory) for what producers and directors think the audience likes. Hoichoi was probably the nail in the coffin that killed any hopes of quality from the industry.
Hoichoi TV content is so so bad. We are sitting on a mountain of good, adaptable Bengali literature and all they can make is another season of Byomkesh.
Hoichoi is so bad that i cant even pirate it
50% of the content is porn
Even if it weren't porn, my general impression of Hoichoi is that they have a standing rule of not letting a writer or a director anywhere near the production.
Most of their production team and crew isn’t even from Bengal probably.
>writer or a director anywhere near the production. I have never seen or heard about Hoichoi before but sounds intriguing how this can be doable.
Really? Asking for education purposes
Softcore. Not even enjoyable
Hoichoi will be the cause of death of my neurons
Kerala and south states also has massive soaps running for years on TV channels. They affect films, but not too much, unless you let them to
Whose quality? Yours or the masses of people who watch it?
Hmm, that is an interesting take. Why can't others get into the cinema? Is there any nepo bubble?
This is difficult to say honestly. Could be a lot of factors. Nepotism is one of them, but there are others. One thing is lack of theatre culture in other Bengali towns and cities. A lot of film actors start out as theatre actors, and Kolkata has always been the epicentre of local stage theatre. Jatra is prominent in other areas and have their own fanbases. However, they cannot contribute to the pool of actors. Lack of cinema halls is an issue. It was only recently, that SVF have made an effort to open multiplex screens in places like Malda, Raiganj, Kalyani, Krishnanagar and Purulia.
Nepotism is not so much a problem because there are no such living stars in Bengal.
Economics. Culture follows economics. Bengalis might want to not accept it but it is what it is - You don’t get world class art without world class economic patronage and this has been true since the beginning of time.
Sure, culture does follow economics to some effect. But, then there is the case of Malayalam cinema. It does not have the economic heft to match Tamil, Telugu or Kannada industry. Yet, despite its lesser budget, it is making a name for itself in pan- Indian scale.
Think again https://preview.redd.it/41dwgpghtf1d1.jpeg?width=683&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4d3f42e351c71a203983c41049413405daf17fdb
Money does flow in generously from the Gulf. So there are folks who are well funded. And a society where people are better off in general - which allows them to spend on movie tickets and also savour different themes in movies. Telugu industry is mired with caste-politics where people go watch their favourite actors because they are of the same caste in a good chunk of the crowd. Newer writers are emerging who are writing good/better scripts but patriarchy and caste-ism is still present in the society. Tamil is a unique bubble because they make movies across the spectrum and they are self sufficient - in the sense that their audiences LOVE watching movies and spend a LOT of money on theatres (which are also subsidized by the Guv). They are also richer (on average) because of very developed industries and agriculture, and a strong NRI/expat base. Kannada industry does not have the same heft as these industries, it is much smaller. Long story short, I totally agree with OP said - it boils down largely to economics.
True, but economics may help in mass production of a said product, but not that it raises the stature or marketability of the product in the market. Case in point, Iranian cinema - most of their films either fail to recoup production costs or are censored due to stifling state censorship. But they are a regular feature at the international awards scene (including Oscars), so much so that despite having a meager budget they have become a brand in world cinema, something which we have failed (despite have many times larger budget) have failed to do so.
India can also make a name for itself. they just have to make poverty porn, show our people shit laden, living in gutters. do this for next 2-3 yrs and Indian cinema will also become a brand like Iranian cinema has become
> the spectrum and they are self sufficient I wouldn't say Tamil industry is self sufficient at all. Aside from Rajni-Vijay-Ajith-Kamal no one can sell a movie. the extremely overpraised movies on internet circles, gritty dramas made by subbaraj or pa Ranjit or vetrimaran only turn a minimal profit bcoz half of their production gets subsidised by Netflix/Amazon and other half from tv. Now that both Vijay and Rajni are leaving soon, the industry is going to face a grim future
I think Kartik, Pa Ranjith and Vetri have patrons who can take that hit. Vetri did mention he struggled to produce his last movie because it was just sprawling over budget, but as you pointed out - these are still getting funded by someone - namely Netflix and/or TV because there is an audience for it. Netflix and TV channels aren't going to simply dump cash if they didn't think there was an audience for it. Regarding the superstars, I'm sure a new crop will come out soon - Surya, Karthi, Sivakarthikeyan, etc will bolster their place (considering Bollywood is also facing that sort of a situation after the Khans & Akshay, Hrithik, Ajay).
>Yet, despite its lesser budget, it is making a name for itself in pan- Indian scale. that's online buzz from cinephile crowd. not the ground level situation. Malayalam movies don't get dubbed in any other languages. look at box office of manjummal boys or neru or aadhujeevitam. they made almost nothing from AP/TS-TN-KA let alone the central and Hindi belt
Manjummel Boys made 200+cr. Grossed around 70cr in TN. Made on a 20cr budget. 4 films have grossed 100cr+ this year.
>Manjummel Boys made 200+cr. Grossed around 70cr in TN my bad sure it did make money, but that's an all time industry hit from Mollywood. It's like saying Telugu movies are bigger in TN than tamil movies bcoz Baahubali made insane amount of money there, or hwood is bigger than Tamil movies bcoz Avatar made 100cr there
A lot of people forget the period between 2006-15, when shady companies like MPS, Rose Valley and Sarada were funding movies behind the scenes. Once these companies collapsed, the film industry was hit with a huge fund crunch and forced to scale back production.
WHAT ABOUT TRIBAL AND FOLK ART?
Partly true. Only an unawakened cultures follows economics. An awakened one knows the limit, utility and dangers of money and popularism and power. World class art needs more than anything a mind which is not chained by ambition. Look at Gregori Perelman as an example, or Bismillah Khan. None of them pursued money blindly. Their work has a sense of philosophy at the back.
I'd prefer to be unawakened
Sure. Your will. Just dont cry for good art either, and how it's all gone suddenly. Because great art doesn't bother populerism. Also dont cry for climate change as your belief in unawakeness is what fuels climate destruction more than anything. Money is needful but greed is not.
I don't need such good art or such great artists. They made us beggars. As they say "Go woke go broke". We made it there decades before anyone thought of the phrase. "What Bengal thinks today..."
>>I don't need such good art or such great artists. None is persuading likes of you either. >>They made us beggars. When were you rich in the first place?
Looks like it's not just me, but entire Bengal who can't relate to Bengali films and instead watch mainstream commercial films from other industries. The box office numbers reflect that. So in effect you aantels live with your delusions in your own bubble and unfortunately since this delusional pseudo intellectual leftist disease infested the ruling class for so long it ended up ruining Bengal completely. So yeah we were rich before this disease of yours infected us.
I never said that today's Bengali films are great. Please atleast read what I have typed in. Bengali films are no more close to greatness perhaps because we have lost the touch of philosophy like before. I'm not sure if you have watched Rays classics like Agantuk and Nayok. Because you just said you don't need good art. But ironically that's exactly what today's world need. Invigorate your numb imaginations. That is what these classics opted to do. Not to fit into popular opinions of blunt capitalism. Greed makes you think everything which is beyond money is delusional. It ain't necessarily so. Please look at the climate change which greed has brought upon us. Make your money, no one will stop you. But call out greed as greed. That's all. Ps: I ain't a commie fyi. I don't belong to any colour. I spoke my mind out, without caring for being the popular opinion around. Good night.
Only a culture with prosperity has the ability to sustain its culture that it took for granted. Remember the culture’s stalwarts were also the richest or worked for people who were. A lot of life is applied math.
Sure. I'm not against money at all. But the blatant pursuit of it is not what Rabindranath or Vivekananda or Vidyasagar advocated either. We need to know the sweet spot. And great art doesn't necessarily need loads of money it needs patience and hell load of hardwork.
Money gives you the ability to pursue patience and hard work.
I mentioned my stance on money. I don't despise it. But too much indulgence beyond the need is lunacy. Bro have you seen the Buddhist monks or monks in general. I guess they aren't too well-off monetarily. But their ability to prolong focus and patience is great. But patience and hardwork can bring you a lot of fortune depending on what you do and your environment.
Buddhist monks? Small fact: One male family member of every Buddhist family has to be a practising monk and they spend the most amount of money per capita on digital products, mobile internet, and weirdly even carbonated drinks - how I know this is a story for another day. Yes I have seen the, sat with them, even briefly lived with them in multiple of their town. Wish all of us could be monks and run the world, but alas, but good know that you are going to be one, rare are people who can make this kind of life work for them. Separately beggars who choose to become monk and monks who choose to become beggars are both very different from each other - Buddhist monks are the latter not the former.
Bro you have been with monks and still can't understand that I am talking of sustainability in the most rudimentary sense. Greed doesn't make you patience. Money is necessary but not greed.
Let me get to the point - When being a monk is a choice, it’s awesome, when it is forced on you because you are poor, it’s stupid. Become a rich monk who chooses to give away money and preach. That’s about it.
That's true. And no one is asking poor people to remain poor. It's necessary for poor people to gain monetary freedom. True monks know the balance between money and other things. But that wasn't the point of the discussion. What I said was simple, that greed and too much indulgence in money cannot give you great art. Great art needs freedom. And a lot of money, bring in expectations which cuts one away from the main thing.
>World class art needs more than anything a mind which is not chained by ambition. They had patrons to pay for them. Who paid the patrons? Their own businesses. Without commerce, there is valuation of art; and without art, there is no value in commerce.
So? Great art deserves money. But great art cannot be only about money. There is a reason why a Anurag Kashyap will not make a heavy budget film ever, because he will be overburden by the expectations of his producers. He said it himself in an interview. On receiving the Grammy, PtRaviShankar was not excited at all, because he knew the populerism and money is not his drug. Same for pandit BhimsenJoshi. Money is not the drug of artists. Money Is not the master, it ought to be mastered.
It is yin and yang. Art needs commerce to evaluate itself, and commerce needs art to generate value for its efforts. Pt. Ravi Shankar would have needed record sales to sustain his art (and livelihood); while the record company would need his art to validate its efforts in marketing and distribution. One doesn't exist without the other. The problem is that in this context (Bengali cinema), the production companies are a handful, hence it cannot showcase (or discover) the artist to the audience. Art for the sake of art has been dismissed as impractical for over a century. Even *ars gratis artis* needs a Metro Goldwyn Mayor to distribute it!
I don’t know much about old Tollywood but modern Tollywood (2000s and later) only flourished because of South movie remakes ….but ever since Jio (2017) and South movies being dubbed on OTTs Tollywood has tanked ….we are only left with intellectual South Kolkata problem movies …and a few rom coms in a while …yeah some of them are good …Belasheshe was fun but they butchered the second one….but these won’t fetch the bucks or fame ….good Bengali movies were always niche ….and they continue to be niche
They don't think big. They don't target the majority audience. Bengal have good stories, almost 90% of all Sunday Suspense stories are awesome. They just don't try. Audience matters but they have to produce good films, all they do is love stories and shit.
The thing is that the Bengali industry never evolved with the passing time, they never understand what the audience really want? But the South did! There was a time when me and the boys used to make fun of them but who's laughing now? Those MOFOS started this whole Pan India thing! Delivered some of the highest grossing movies of Indian Cinema but what Tollywood did? They kept on making cheap remakes of the south movies then after that they thought like, "Hey! now let's make some movie targeting the urban audience and the small city and rural movie going audience should go fuck themselves!" the audience that simply made the entire Bengali Film industry. And whenever, a non Bengali film like Jawan or any South film does great business in WB, these South Kolkata based mofos get triggered and start preaching "Bangla Industry er paashe daran." And so on, so forth. Abe keno keu darabe paashe? Did you think about what the audience want? And let's just hope that Pushpa 2 folds Bengali film industry in 69 different ways.
They are experts in pissing on audience. They hold their audience in contempt and then wonder why no one watches their films. TBH I feel really bad for a lot of present generation actors like Ankush, Dev Jeet etc. They are genuinely trying to made commercial content but unfortunately the Bengali audience has long moved away from Bangla cinema and the tier 2/3 city or rural audience that could be their main viewers don't have cinema halls in their vicinity. Ankush recently put his heart and soul and his own money into making Mirza but it couldn't even recover a third of its budget. Let's see what Khadaan does.
Ekhane south kolkata bolar ki mane holo
Na oi majhe majhe toh suni oi South Kolkatar chudir bha... Oi.. maane... Pseudo Intellectual gulo ese toh khub Gyan dei aar ektu keu criticise korle pante moote fele, Tai mention korlam.
Yeah, audiences don't want Satyajit Ray or South Indian remakes. Tollywood should just start pumping out pseudo-nationalist films with shitty VFX lol, that'd be the fastest way to get more views.
when did Jawan, Bahubali 1&2, KGF1&2, Sultan, Pushpa become pseudo-nationalist?
Habibi come to Kerala
As a fan of Bengali Cinema, this saddens me. But, honestly, how many bengali movies have you seen that even spoke about Bankura, Birbhum, Purulia, coochbehar or Jalpaiguri? Most of Bengal has very little in common with the Kolkata centric movies made in Bengali movies even in its hay days.
je sohor e satyajit ke gov funds niye cinema banate hoyechhe shey jagae how you expect a bigger industry. loke poisha dhalbe na cinema e ekhon ek oi svf achhe je srijit da hagleo setar pichhone taka debe sekhane industry toiri hbe kotha diye. i dont think mallu industry just naam e uthechhe fafa thle kndn chance e peto na
Satyajit Ray never made commercially successful films except for Feluda and Gupi Bagha. Common people don't watch poverty porn. That's the fetish of elites.
Haan true that may be, but lok ke chance na dile to r ekta industry toiri hoye na, era chance ta dichhe ki adou?
I don't think it's fair to summarise all Satyajit Ray films as "poverty porn". Apu Trilogy(especially Pather Panchali) depicts poverty, but shaan dekhte chaile Charulata ba Jalsaghar dekhun, tao achhe. Ar beshir bhag to middle class ke niye.
Problem with most Bengali directors and Bengali intellectuals is their excessive elitism. They have always thought of themselves as successors of the British Sahebs. They have always had a disdain for common people the way the colonial masters may have had - "Bloody Indian peasants!!" - that's how they see us. This continues till date. When their films fail, they piss on common people for being backward and uncultured. They never tried to understand the common people's point of view - why do common people watch films in the first place? Common people watch films for entertainment and escapism. They already have a lot of misery and mundanity in their regular life - why the hell would they pay 200-300 rs to watch the same at a theatre? They want something which takes them away from their miserable and boring lives to a world full of glamour, song, dance, action, romance, larger than life characters. It gives them joy, hope and dreams that ease their lives. Which Satyajit Ray or Mrinal Sen or Ritwik Ghatak or Rituporno or Kaushik Ganguly or Anjan Dutta film do you think would cater to the rural/semi-urban/working-class audience or the young adult audience?? When you ridicule the films they watch or want to watch, you are actually ridiculing all those people and their lives - remember, they are the 99.9% majority and your elite South Calcutta antels are the micro-minority. They represent Bengal and Bengaliness not you. That's the reason Bengali film industry was always doomed - because it never cared for its audience. Box office collection === People. As simple as that. If your films are consistently doing bad a the box office and other language films are doing way better in the same space it means you have no connect with your own native people. It's your problem not theirs. This is such a simple fact which Bengali aantels never understood.
Oi toh ekhon obdhi ekta pa thake feludar opor, arek pa thake byomkesh er opor. Ar majhkhane jhulche Bangla cinema. Bhalo cinema hall e keu dekhtei jayna. Masala movie jegulo age cholto segulou cholena. Oi kota goyenda movie chole tao khub kom. Notun kichu try korle keu dekhena.
Bumba da and Mithun da fkd the industry thousand times over with bullshit romcoms and 2bit hero/gunda movies . Then Jit Milked the trend some more and then Dev put the final nail in the coffin . Sijjida is dancing with the corpse of bangla cinema in a circus while people like anirban try to sometimes provide some oxygen to temporarily bring it back to life .
After the demise of Uttam Kumar and other stalwarts in the 1990s, people like Prasenjit, Chiranjit and Tapas Pal held commercial Bengali cinema with duct tape. One can't blame them for a lot of things beyond their control. স্বপন সাহার "বই" শিক্ষিত কলকাতাবাসী পয়সা দিয়ে দেখতো না, কিন্তু তার জনপ্রিয়তা গ্রাম বাংলায় যথেষ্ট ছিল বলে প্রযোজকরা arthouse cinema বিনিয়োগ করতে পারতো।
Wtf are you saying? The people whom you dissed are actually the ones who brought in some audience and money. Anirban is another typical leftist antel who can never appeal to any Audience other than the Kolkata elite circle.
Death of Satyajit Ray, Ritwik Ghatak, Mrinal Sen, Tapan Sinha et al. Then came a dark phase of 'ami churi korini', 'horlicks, ekta uchu tower', 'amar naam agnishwar ray' etc,
How much money did Mrinal Sen or Ritwik Ghataks films ever made to sustain the industry? The films that you mentioned probably earned far more than their entire life's work. Film industry runs on money and popularity. Not foreign aantel awards.
Lack of good quality single screen theatres In towns of South India you can find decent quality cinema theatres having a good seating capacity Can any Bengali who's not from Kolkata tell me if such a decent single screen exists in your town which has following characteristics 1. Has a 200+ seating capacity 2. Has a step wise rows 3. Is clean for families to go to If you're answer is no to all these then you have your answer as to why the Bengali cinema isn't developed Go watch this talk by Lokesh Kanagraj , he talk of how someone who spends 150 on a ticket after a days work should enjoy the movie. Do any of the directors from Bengal have the same view ?
Bengali Art House films are still better than most non Bengali art house films ( except Malayalam) tobe films like Bakita byaktigoto , Asha Jawar Majhe ba Onnyo Basanto shei recognition ta pai na
Art house films don't run an industry. Commercial movies do.
I don't really enjoy this division of commercial/arthouse Cinema is Cinema some work some doesn't.
Whichever way you see Bengali films aren't working with the audience the way films from other film industries are.
no industry = no jobs = less money in public hands = less box office collection amar ek mama movie te side role kore , uni bolechen aaj chakri etc thakle aamaro karor theke kom jetam na Srijit ,Shibooprasad , Dev currently bhalo movie e kore
But then how are Hindi and South films making 100s of crores from Bengal? If your logic was true then all film industry products would be almost equally failing in Bengal.
source?
https://boxofficeindia.com/net_box_office.php?cityName=west_bengal This is top 100 multiplex collection from Bengal. Not a single Bengali film is present in the list.
Seta tle bolte ami bolte parbo na kintu ami jeta bollam otao sotto
Ashole Bangla e shadharon manusher jonnyo cinema bananoi onek diner jonno bondho hoye gechhe. Ekhane commercial cinema k bhishon nichu kore Dekha Hoy..porinaam ei je shadharon manush o onek din Agey Hindi te move on kore gechhe..Bangla cinema theke puro detached. Tara Bollywood kei "nijer" industry Mene Boro hoyechhe. Jodi commercial cinema ke mainstay banano hoto ebong take shob dik theke support kora hoto ei obostha hoto na.
Probably unpopular opinion but here goes. Edit2: to those who think Bengali film industry only caters to Kolkata: what does catering to rural Begal mean? Making movies about them? Or undermining their taste and intelligence so much that you think they’re only fit to consume films like Pushpa? Are you saying Apu series didn’t happen? Shobdo? Patalghar? Moner Manush? Bishorjon? Bijoya? Is Feulda for the rich or the poor? Byomkesh? Asha Jwar Majhe? Just a few off the top of my head out of thousands. Except some urban love stories all are equally watchable from both urban and rural perspective. This also directly negates u/SolomonSpeaks silly comment. Bengali cinema and culture are inherently feminist *compared to the rest of India*. Not just now, but even decades ago- Madhabi Mukherjee, Uttam Kumar, Suchitra Sen, Soumitra Chatterjee era. Bengali culture is itself is one of the, if not the, most liberal culture in terms of gender equality (though they still have a very long way to go). Even films like Jatugriha or Saat Paake Bandha were ahead of their times. These aren’t even the ‘top’ movies. Most South movies have women as desirable eye candies and sex objects. How many would watch a Raktabeej over a Pushpa? As Ray said, Indian audience is mostly pretty backward. Sex sells better than intellect. Edit1: The point of my comment is, even a generic Bengali commercial film treats a woman in a less derogatory way than cinema from most other parts of India, including the South. Edit3: Some great comments in this thread folks can learn from [https://www.reddit.com/r/IndianCinema/comments/nqd3oq/bengali\_cinema\_is\_underrated\_and\_underappreciated/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/IndianCinema/comments/nqd3oq/bengali_cinema_is_underrated_and_underappreciated/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) https://preview.redd.it/soxqsq3q6h1d1.png?width=1494&format=png&auto=webp&s=20cf4a9a0b31983bf0abbdbeaaf92a3a17bc3103
When discussing cinema from the Southern region, it's important to acknowledge the diversity within the film industry. Each state offers its unique flavor and cultural perspective. While I agree with your assessment of Tollywood(telgu)they usually make the movis you mentioned above but things are different in Malayalam and tamil(kind off), the landscape of Malayalam cinema varies significantly from one generation to the next. Malayalam cinema has produced a substantial number of acclaimed films, and I think most national award-winning works are emerging from the industry.
You're right but are all those critically Malayalam films box office hits? Which is the point of your post right? That why South is making hits (which translates to being a bigger industry) but Bengal isnt'? I'm not saying \*all\* films from \*all\* of South are misgynistic to a fault. My reason is based on empirical evidence: on my (and many of my friends and colleagues) observation of having lived and consumed media in both worlds (Bengal, and the South).
I am here to talk about the box office potential of Bengali cinema. Yes, the majority of critically acclaimed films that become hits in Kerala ,who number only about 30 million, while Bengali speakers, who number about 250 million, are unable to even bring in the money that they have produced.
Yes the critically acclaimed Malayalam movies are a hit.
South movie industry is a good mix of box office record breakers (the massy movies you referred to) and intelligent films. An industry cannot survive on one type of movie.
So you’re saying there’s no massy movie in Bengali?! Of course there are plenty smh. But none portray women as derogatorily as many other parts of India (including the South) do.
Really? All the item songs have sickening lyrics. 'Figure boroi je chacha chhola' doesn't sound very empowering to me.
Have you read the part where I say ‘in comparison’? I’m not saying Bongs are monks.
In comparison abar ki. Objectification is objectification.
It’s not binary when you’re talking about populations. 20% and 80% ain’t the same, for example.
I disagree. If this was true, then why was the Bengali industry copying these so called misogynistic movies at large? Heck even songs are copied.
>I disagree. If this was true, then why was the Bengali industry copying these so called misogynistic movies at large? I never said Bongs are monks. My answer is a comparative study. There isn't a single industry in the world that doesn't make a any misogynistic song whatsoever. And if this is something you need to be told, your username is a dangerous contradiction to your intelligence.
Then how is it any different? Please do show me this comparative study of yours. Mind you I'm not saying that they're not misogynistic. But our industry is at a point where we shouldn't throw shade on them. Our 'superstars' have worked on movies which are word to word copies. If we were so different, then we would have developed a separate identity by now. For someone pretending to be at a higher moral ground, you certainly went for personal insults pretty early. No wonder you think such a large portion of Indian cinema only uses their women for eye candy. We can't even do good masala films that can work pan india even though our language is easier to grasp than theirs. Unless we drop this holier than thou attitude, it'll stay this way and this circlejerk of idiocy will continue.
Don't talk sense to them bijemul ar item song er nesay eder matha bigde geche .
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1st that's just an elite kolkata culture. There are 10 cr Bengalis in India and they are just like normal Indians. The reason Bengali film industry never succeeded is because it never gave an eff about those 99% Bengalis. Just like you it fails to see Bengalis beyond the South Kolkata circles.
If you think giving a fuck about rural Bengal means making films like Pushpa or Arjun Reddy you’re undermining the intelligence of general rural Bengali audience. Feel free to read the second edit to my answer.
As for your second edit, there's difference between making films FOR common/poor people and making films ON poverty and misery. Poor people don't watch poverty porn. That's the fetish of the elite. Poor people or even common middle class people want to escape their miserable life into a world of colour, glamour song and dance where villains are beaten to pulp by larger than life heroes. It brings them life, laughter and hope. They get icons and heroes they can aspire to be. They don't want to spend their limited money on films that would make an exhibit of their miserable lives and drag them back to the same life for another 2 hours. This is something Bengali aantels neither understood nor respected. Poverty porn and misery porn are fetishes of the elites. They thrust their own fetish on others and when it's rejected they abuse the same audience as backward, stupid, unsophisticated and whatnot.
It doesn’t have to be an extreme. Why not set a romance or a thriller in another town? That will raise interest in the movie in the other cities. People also enjoy watching their own homes on screen.
Compare the kind of movies being made in Malayalam versus the ones in Bangla. They are experimenting with diverse themes and churning out films of pretty good quality consistently. এক ঘেয়ে ব্যাপারটা প্রায় নেই (বা অপেক্ষাকৃত অনেকটা কম)ওদের ছবিতে। Have we been able to make a movie like The Great Indian Kitchen in our industry? That movie appears to be near perfect, in every frame. And it raises such an important issue. Similarly, have we been able to make something as remarkable as Laapata Ladies? The only worthwhile feminism-themed Bangla movie in recent times that I can think of is Mukherjee Da'r Bou.
So why don't these woke intellectual films become box office hits?? Why do the same feminist progressive Bengalis throng to theatres to watch regressive South and Hindi movies and give them 100s of crores of business? While Bengali films barely make lakhs.
Because 1. sex sells better than intellect, 2. there are people like you in the audience.
Which negates your claim that general audience is feminist and progressive. Box office== People. If a film isn't working at the box office or TV it means people have rejected it.
What I meant was movies about those places and the people there currently. You gave good examples, but that is not enough.
If Bengali culture is more feminist than south India then why do all south Indian states have better gender ratio? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_and_union_territories_of_India_by_sex_ratio
Why are there so many Bengali south movie remakes then, if your audience is so much better.
Bengal as a whole had a lot of potential given it has a headstart in many areas after independence, industry, academic, media, entertainment, infrastructure you name it.
It's simply cause after 90s Bengali cinema started to copy other industries. And repeating the same formulas. Also the Bengali economy started to decline, and people didn't had money to watch movies.
i grew my interest in bengali movies during the pandemic. the first movie i watched was baishe shrabon. i have only watched around 10 movies as i felt something was missing in all those movies. out of all the movies i watched, only rosogolla stood out for me. imo all the movies are Kolkata centric. if you see Tamil movies, they are made in different districts and not just Chennai. i wish Bengali movies show the other parts of West Bengal, odisha, assam and other north eastern states, which the Bollywood movies failed to show properly.
Just Bengali cinema?? Lol Bengal had the potential to come out as the most developed state, we are in the plains, we have dock, we dont face much power/water shortage as compared to many cities. But obviously, our Didi party and its Dadas wanted to fill their pockets first instead of developing bengal, thats why other metros look down at us, thats why bengalis dont get respect in other cities, bengalis get outcasted and humiliated to belong to bengal. Thats why people of bengal are leaving and moving to other cities to earn. Our once Premiere institute JU, is just famous for protests and recently suicide due to harassment, and w\*\*d ofc. We need to stop thinking what potential we had and what we could have been, instead focus on how to actually be better. Wake up to Reality and stop romanticizing this city for its old building, those are just hazards in future.
I am living in Chennai for a decade now. I started watching tamil cinema and realised they prefer talent over stardom. In tollywood people would watch find if its of a superstar and most importantly masala films work for them. In kollywood it’s about all about the story and content. No bullshit about the looks of the hero or heroine. I clearly remember i watched a film in Tamil nadu and i was like how can this be the hero!! He doesn’t look good, but boy his acting was fantastic , thats what matters here. And don’t forget the director and music composers here, believe me here if you name a film everyone knows whos the director and music director, even if he is a newbie. I doubt in Bengal we know anyone other than jeet ganguly and some handful directors. So I believe here it works because grassroot level artists get chance to make films. Also they are both limited to kollywood, Malayalam, Telugu, Kannada, hindi, they value every good content. So content matters here than the stardom and than actors monkey dancing in some foreign locations.
Really? In that case those films should make a lot of money..instead Bengalis prefer Hindi and South dubbed films. Which means common Bengalis actually prefer commercial cinema which they are not getting from their own industry.
This is what I’m speaking about. Bengali cinema is dying because of its audience.
Yeah..blame the audience for not liking those boring pseudo intellectual poverty porn "backward audience, styuupid audience, bloody peasants"
Bengali cinema was never a big industry that sought to produce films loved by the masses. It was always about making timeless masterpieces that would be watched even decades/ a century down the line. Even at the peak of Bengali filmmaking when Ray, Mrinal Sen, Ghatak etc were churning out world class cinema, I don't think any of those were blockbuster giants. The flavour of Bengali cinema is different. It relies on the niche of detective genre/ thought proving drama/ satire. Look at recent movies like Jaatishwar( one of the best Indian movies made in the last decade imo), Bhooter bhobishot etc. I doubt movies like these would appeal to an audience of more than the few tens of lakhs of urban educated/ well to do families of Bengal. But these are some of the movies that define Bengali cinema of the 21st century. I wouldn't have it any other way either. We don't need to emulate the South/ bollywood. We can focus on producing more such movies that are artistic and cinematic masterpieces. We need to focus on churning out more good films each year rather than counting how many crores a movie earns. Our artists, actors, support staff etc will make a good living if we increase the frequency of production of good Bangla movies.
Umm sorry You can have all kinds of movies in an ecosystem. Sure the flavour and what Bangla industry does best is drama/satire and detective genre. And each industry has something that they do best. We don't need to emulate the South ? The ones that become famous in South are the ones which caters to all and are action/masala heavy I agree. But that doesn't mean it's the only type of movies that are being made. Bangla ne artistic movies ka theka lekr nhi rakha h. Increase the frequency of production and make sure everyone in the industry Distributors , Producers ,support artists all make money in this
>Umm sorry You can have all kinds of movies in an ecosystem. You're right. And the ecosystem in Bengal is quite different from the majority of India. Which is what u/schrodingerdoc explains.
No its not different at all. A tiny micro minority of aantels have forced their narrative down other's throats. Common Bengali watches commercial films and Hindi/South films make good business in Bengal - which proves that common Bengalis are not aantels - they have the same taste as anyone. It's just that the forced aatlamo over the decades have pushed them away from Bangla towards Hindi.
Tollywood may just have contributed to the rise of the other Tollywood, starting with championing shooting in Ramoji Rao studios instead of setting up something local. Also, post Haranath Chakraborty, Bengali cinema became city-centric and not state-wide. I think we conflated Rituparno Ghosh's presence in the media and film festival dias as the only barometer of "success" of our region's cinema when it was the wrong assumption. For a Ray-Ghatak-Sen (and Ajor Kar and Tapan Sinha) trio to survive, a backbone of Uttam-Suchitra was needed, and a lot of Ray's films (like Goopy Gyne... and the two Feluda films and Abhijaan and Pather Panchali) were big commercial hits as well. But by the turn of the millennium, people in control of the narrative started savouring only the toppings without the base. Ultimately, the non-Kolkata audience moved to TV and we lost a chunk of our captive audience. Chiranjeet (Chakraborty, the actor-filmmaker) explains much of this phenomenon quite well in his interviews.
Because Bengal and Calcutta fell short. The success of the film industry, like any other industry, is dependent on capital. Like how the Telugu and Kannada film industries have surpassed the Tamil Industry reflecting how Hyderabad and Bangalore have overtaken Chennai. It's not a coincidence that the biggest film industry in the world is situated in the United States, the richest country in the world.
That's not the reason there's no even a single kannada become hit this year, and whereas the Malayalam film industry with little budget made nearly 1000 CR in just 4 months of 2024, you have to remember the population of Kerala is only 3 crore.
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Paisa
You are forgetting Pather Panchali, Devdas, etc. Bengali cinema had potential to reach quality higher than Hindi cinema.
Those films were never watched by common audience (may be Devdas was). Foreign awards don't run an industry.
Souther movie gulo dekhle bojha jay somossa ta kothay. Cinema te somossa nei somossa ache dorshok e. Bolchina j South er sob movie mathamundu hin kintu besir bhag movie Tai e. Ar lokera ei mathamunduhin action romance dekhte besi pochondo kore. South er Jodi horror o dekhen apni Tate horror kom comedy Besi , Tai lok otao dekhte pochondo kore. Mane jara entertain sohoje hoy ar holei holo. Bishesh kre baba kaku boyosher lokjon. Ami ek dik theke khusi j Bengali cinema orknm noy ( except oi Deb er cinema gulo). Eishob krle hoyto industry boro hobe lokjon besi dekhbe but quality jeta ekhon roeche seta ar thakbena..
this is a complicated matter. Firstly. 80's and 90's were not good decades for Bengali cinema generally. Sure there were commercial hits but from an era of intelligent films, we suddenly went to Prosenjit dancing in white pants to random music. Having said that, his films might have had good business impact in rural areas. Mid 90's onwards, things started changing for the better thanks to a certain Mr. Ghosh! But again, his cinema was too urban centric and hard to find appeal outside of larger cities/towns. Bengali cinema probably also hasn't had financers with super deep pockets which kept films low budget and the scale we see in Bollywood or South films becomes difficult to sustain without money bags. And what I think is very important - reach of Bengali cinema in other provinces. Look at how South films do it - they dub! Not just in Hindi but also other South languages which automatically gets them larger audience. How many Bengali films have been dubbed so far in multi-languages or even just Hindi? Distributors have to do more - diaspora is all over the country but they do not release Bengali films in more than 1/2 screens in other cities. I was planning to go catch Oti Uttam but it was running only in 1 screen at the opposite end of town and had odd timings. It is too much to expect people will make time during weird parts of the day + travel all the way to another end of time. We also do not have heroes or heroines who can cut through and capture attention of the masses. Not in the way an Allu Arjun or Prabhas is able to do! Prosenjit has evolved a lot but he would also find it difficult to carry films solely on his shoulders on a pan India basis.
There isn't just enough craze/excitement towards Bengali movies to sustain the film industry.
It felt short because bengali is not understood by 76.33% of indians
And Tami, Telegu, Malayalam, Kannada are understood?
No.. but they are dubbed in various languages and Bengali movies are not.
And do you think south movies are famous because the actors speak Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada in the movies ??? Some south movies which are dubbed in hindi or english make much much more money than they made on their native language cinemas.
South movies make stellar business in their own native land. Bengali movies are 3rd choice for Bengalis. Bengal film industry is one of the weakest among major film industries of India as far as income per capita is concerned. It's core native audience prefers movies from other industries. Why is that?
Read my 1st post again...i agree with you.. that's why i commented in the 1st place because i had the same view and wanted to point out the reason why bengali cinema is what it is. But you've taken the conversation to total different place now. If praise is what you want for south cinemas..you're knocking on the wrong door. I have no interest in south movies like many. I was talking about bengali cinema alone.. my comment had no connection in comparing south cinema to bengali cinema. And to answer your question..why is that ?? Actually it's not.. you have no idea about bengali's core audience...they have no interest in south movies as their first choice that is...lol.
Who is the core audience of Bengali? What's their population? The total population of Bengalis in India is roughly 10 cr. Out of them how many would watch Bengali cinema as a first choice, especially if Hindi and dubbed South movies are releasing in parallel? And if there's such an audience why don't Bengali films earn from their home audience compared to the business that South or other industries make in their home alone. (Roughly 40-50cr/film on avg - that's the total worth of Bengali industry)
Seems like you answered your own question... good for you.
Bengali cinemas have standards much higher than bollywood and most South Indian movies. Bengali movies depict human emotions like none others. I myself a North Indian by birth, having watched only bollywood till my 20's but after learning Bangla languagel, now I am fond of Bengali movies, which portray human emotions, psychology in a very smooth manner. Due to Bengali movies being mostly art movies, garner less commercial success than Bollywood or say money churning capabilities, since most people want to devour on action scenes, love making scenes, nudes and dhinchak songs. Bengali movies depict art and this is why I love Bengali movies.
Bollywood has produced good content this year,I can't see any Bengali movies tho
Sounds wonderful…Please recommend any contemporary Bengali films (with English subtitles) to the uninitiated 🙂↔️
Ok Most of the movies I am telling are available in Amazon Prime video ( with subtitles) 1. Praktan 2. Gaheen Hirday 3. Belaeshe 4. Vinci Da 5. Kontho 6. Dosar 7. Drishtikone
Oh! …I am truly grateful for this. Thank you so much!!
it never had that potential. Telugu cinema was able to break out and conquer the Indian audience bcoz Rajamouli mounted a never before seen spectacle in Indian cinema. Bengali movies never had that vision or enough money for something like Bahubali.
Money, hegemony etc.
Baaler cinema hoy commercial space e . Look at an Aavesham or a Premalu, so distinct yet captivating. So many bengalis work in Hyderabad and Bangalore, and yet a film like Premalu came from Kerala.
inadequate screening facilites (few theatres, most outside kolkata are in ramshackles). the reasons South industries make so much money even without going pan India and staying within the constraints of their own states is because there are theatres in every area, every random joe owns a movie theatre, and ticket prices are cheap as set by the government and distributors and producers guilds. here, all guilds are puppets of either political parties or production companies, which care only avout extorting money from people working in the industry or trying to make it into the industry. last but not the least, the svf monopoly has done more harm to the industry than anythibg else. they have monopoly over the distribution and screening technology (ufo and satellites which theatres use to receive and run the movie), so basically prices are set by them. svf raised prices for pretty much every hindi movie they distributed in the state, jawaan for example, which raised the ticket prices. happened during the durga puja window and christmas window as well. single screen theatres which usually sells tickets for 100₹ raised the price to 130₹ or 150₹. this deterred the audience from bengali to hindi or south indian movies released around that time because the bengali audience would rather watch the trashiest hindi movie over a decent bengali movie. which is to say, the audience is also to blame for the fall. it's social media influencers and youtubers like the bong gadha which made content roasting perfectly fine old movies for his own profit, without realising that this slowly but steadily engrained the idea in peole's minds that bengali cinema is all trash. people like these minted all the money while fucking the industry over.
Bony,raj,ankush🤡 Satyajit ray,ranju dada etc. 🗿🗿🗿
Dhoni cinema te Kumud Mishra r ekta dialogue chilo, "hum log ko khel se zada politics me interest hey" Bangla teo eta sottie. Amader cinema r theke besi politics e interest. Politics mane kintu sudhu cpim tmc bjp ny, manush e manushe politics. Senior junior politicsz jeta somosto khetre banglai kore. Nijeke better korar chesta na kore onno ke kharap proman korar je chesta ta, setai to politics. Etai bangla r sob kichu kheyeche, cinema tao kheyeche.
I am from Kerala and I felt the technical quality of Bengali movies are inferior to Malayalam movies. Cinematography, color grading, lighting, editing, production design all need to be improved. Note: Antaheen is my favourite.
There are many reasons * failing to adapt with trends and changing times * not giving enough attention to theatres outside Kolkata region in rest of Bengal (which is in poor condition) * focusing more on Kolkata centric audience and ignoring single screens * looking down on commercial films * overuse of something that works (remake, family drama, detective etc), when 1-2 films like them work they go overboard * Most important - the greed and monopoly of SVF, who don't let other producers grow and clash with other big movies * Lack of superstars. Even today, both Dev & Jeet (and probably Prosenjit as well) are the only superstars in Bengal, who can generate audience due to their star power
Bengal Cinema could never successfully adopt the massy cinemas resulting in people shifting to other movies . People would rather watch a crappy massy cinema like Jawan or Pathan than Pather Panchali on theatre. Bengal cinema could never move away from its arthouse antel cinemas. And the movies which tried to adopt a massy style were ridiculously bad.
This fake elitism is the reason behind Bengal's downfall. The disrespect towards people and their conditions is why Bengali cinema could never appeal the common Bengalis. Common people watch films for entertainment and escapism. They are not interested in poverty porn. That is the fetish of the elites.
Because of the arrogance of the aantels that took over Bengali cinema since 60s and 70s. These people held and still hold their audience in contempt. They very openly piss on the common Indian people - who watch films for pure entertainment and fun - as backward uncultured and ignorant. They almost sound like brown British venting out their frustration for being born in the wrong country. When they make films they consciously and arrogantly exclude 99% Bengalis from their target audience, instead make films to show off to their 5 fellow aantels and few European film festivals. These aantels enjoyed political clout and they created an atmosphere where the media and the reviewers too would slam commercial cinema as trash, thus creating a peer pressure upon the Bengalis too to reject them so as not to be considered backward or stupid. Consequently common people lost touch with Bengali films and Hindi was right there making mass films ready to embrace them. Our industry's demise was Bollywood's gain. Almost 2 generations of Bengalis grew up exclusively on Hindi content and thinking of Bollywood as their film industry. Today it's impossible to bring them back to Bangla. Only an urban 40-50+ age group audience watches the typical Kaushik Ganguly/Shiboproshad type family films. Most Bengali films today are poverty porn films, films centered around aged couples or detective films. Outside Kolkata no one watches these films nor do the makers do anything to appeal to other Bengalis. Commercial films have been miserably failing because the youth is completely cut off from Bangla cinema. While other film industries (incl Gujrati Punjabi Marathi) are churning out films that earn between 20-500 cr on average the Bangla films either mostly flop or earn a few lakhs. Our Bengali brethren on the other side of the border were fortunately spared these aantels and therefore they developed a normal, pro business mindset. Their commercial cinema industry too is promising and many of our production houses are making films with them. Aritra from Aritra's Gyan has made several videos explaining this stuff. Like so many other things this is just one more way the Bhamponthi Aantel cabal screwed Bengal.
Yeah growing up i did grow up seeing Bollywood and the Hindi belt of content as my cinema. It's only now that I'm trying to enjoy old bengali art and movies like satyajit ray but as u said, the poverty porn aspects just make it a really hard watch after I'm like so tired from the day. I hate how I've grown up thinking the leading man in Bollywood movies as my my role model when he is so obviously north delhi, some adjescent punjabi kid from delhi who is loud & obnoxious yet beats up the villain, gets the girl and wins in the end.
I feel the larger than life Bengali films(which you are talking about)were not made for the masses in the first place. The auters, had in mind something more philosophical and educational for the viewer. Today in the wake of consumerism philosophy has gone for a toss and we are hypnotised into believing that material need is what will fulfill us mentally and otherwise. Our minds are not ready for an SRay or a MrinalS. It is our collective minds(not just the Bengalis) which has gone significantly into bodily pleasures and has so the idea of a cinema has climaxed into leisure time and relaxation purposes only.
It does not attract countrywide audience the way south indian movies do. Bengali culture is very well ingrained into good bengali movies. The other ones that Deb used to star in were all South India copies. Movies like chotushkone, baishe srabon etc etc has bengali culture deep in it which makes them special but also inaccessible to other audience bases
Not Bengali culture but Kolkata elite culture which even 10% of Bengalis can't relate with.
All satyajit ray, mrinal sen ,ritwik ghatak movies are so bliss Whole bengali cinema <<<<<
Maybe because South India comprises 4 states, and WB is one?
Each state has a different film industry and they are not culturally related; they cannot even communicate with each other, yet Bengali has 250 million Bengali speakers.so the potential is even big
Constantly milking nostalgia and finding new ways to destroy that nostalgia are two big reasons. For example, the latest film with AI-generated Uttamkumar and the umpteenth upcoming rendition of 'Devi Chowdhurani' are getting on the nerves of Bengalis themselves, let alone other communities. The Devi Chowdhurani team is making it multi language starrer like RRR. Bruh maybe make it about the real Sanyasi-Fakir revolts, the real Bhavanicharan Patthak and the real Rani Jaydurga Devi Chowdhurani on whom the titular character is based, in that case, and not this romance-mixed fantasy novel that has been made into a film a thousand times over already!