Art Cinema and India's Forgotten Futures: Film and History in the Postcolony by Rochona Majumdar (review)

Abstract

Rochona Majumdar’s Art Cinema and India’s Forgotten Futures: Film and History in the Postcolony is a history of the art cinema movement in India in the immediate aftermath of decolonization and an argument for reading Indian art cinema, particularly the work of Bengali filmmakers Ritwik Ghatak, Mrinal Sen, and Satyajit Ray, as forms of historiographic thinking, which provide conceptual insights into the postcolonial present. Art Cinema and India’s Forgotten Futures charts the cultural history of the art cinema movement in India, focusing on the 1950s to the 1980s, a period that saw the rise of state support for independent filmmaking fueled by an optimistic vision of the newly formed nation-state’s role in cultural life and the subsequent decline of these institutions and the disillusionment that followed the intense political upheavals of the 1970s. The book, which is divided into two parts, is structured by the historical break between the optimistic political atmosphere of the early decades following Indian independence and the political disillusionment of the 1970s and after. Majumdar opens by connecting the rise of art cinema or “good films” with the pedagogical project of the newly formed nation-state to produce “good citizens.”1 It is worth noting here that throughout the text, Majumdar