Vi segnalo un articolo molto interessante, A century of cinema, redatto da Baradwaj Rangan e pubblicato da The Hindu il 31 marzo 2012. Di seguito un estratto:
'While it is difficult to define, precisely, what Indian cinema is, it's easy to see why its hundredth year, in 2013, is going to be celebrated. It's a matter of national pride, like a hundred hundreds in cricket - and in at least one sense, there's genuine cause. Ours is the only cinema (...) that has not been squelched under the Hollywood juggernaut. In most other countries, American cinema insidiously assumes a pitch-perfect local disguise, either through dubbing or subtitling, and nudges out the national cinema, which comes a distant second - in terms of the numbers of movies being made, in terms of the money earned, in terms of what the locals prefer to watch. We, on the other hand, like our Hollywood films, we welcome their arrival on our shores the same day as everywhere else in the world, and those of us who don't know English slip into versions of these films where James Bond lets loose his bons mots in irreproachable Tamil and Telugu - and yet, our numerous film industries continue to thrive. Large numbers of movies are being made in Indian languages and being seen by large numbers of Indians. We might even celebrate the gradual encroachment of Indian cinema not just into New York but also onto the august pages of the New York Times, where Indian films are now reviewed like films in other foreign languages. But the tone of these reviews is a slap of cold wind, a blustering reality check that our films are treated, mostly, with arch amusement and a benign tolerance for a crazy people who sing and dance and just cannot be taken seriously. Our art cinema, of course, is treated with seriousness and showcased in reverent retrospectives - but Indian cinema is mainly commercial cinema (there; perhaps that could be the definition), and it doesn't carry, in the eyes of the well-travelled cineaste, the consequence of cinema from other nations - French cinema, Italian cinema, Spanish cinema. The names of Indian filmmakers just don't leap off the lip like the names of Almodóvar or Nanni Moretti, whose entertaining films are also regarded as essential. (...) But even as we celebrate our unique (and split) identity in cinema and look forward, it is vital to honour the past that brought us to this day. Film preservation is practically non-existent in the country - it's not just the black-and-white silents that have been consumed by the chemicals that created them but also films from later decades, as late as the 1980s, whose prints are either lost (even the directors, lamentably, are at a loss, for they didn't think it important to hold on to the original negatives) or retrievable only as 10th-generation copies on DVDs, where these films are bundled up with a bunch of other movies, in a mournful echo of the buy-one-get-one-free ads. Almost all our films from the pre-digital era are damaged in some form, and even if we don't have - as Hollywood does - a system of enshrining classics in National Film Registries, we might at least ensure that acceptable prints are available to future generations. The other hope I harbour while commemorating this centenary is that subtitles be made mandatory for films made in every Indian tongue, even Hindi, which, contrary to the Centre's assumption, isn't exactly a nationally understood language. Perhaps we'd be better equipped to define Indian cinema if we saw films in Malayalam and Marathi and Bengali and Assamese, perfectly in harmony with each moment (and not just a vague sense of the plot)'.
