/ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT/FILMS: Bangla-language Cinema Bonds Bangladesh, India

By Sujoy Dhar Reprint | | Print |

Sujoy Dhar

CALCUTTA, India, Jun 22 1999 (IPS) - For the Bangla-language film industry, it is as if the border between India and Bangladesh does not exist.

Film-makers and actors cross over to star and produce films in each other’s countries; creating winning productions avidly watched on both sides of the border.

Movies are to die for among rural and urban Bangladeshis and in the Indian state of West Bengal divided in 1905 by the colonial British rulers into two provinces, now two countries.

When the legendary Indian film-maker Satyajit Ray passed away in Calcutta in April 1992, his 1955 classic ‘Pather Panchali’ (the ballad of the road) was watched on state TV by grieving Bangladeshis.

Films in Ray’s genre are few and far between, most releases now are romantic potboilers, the staple of the roughly 150 million dollar film industry in each country.

The poor boy falls in love with rich girl theme is standard fare; throw in pelvic gyrating nubile actresses, high-voltage dialogues and bloody feuds and the film is an assured success across villages on both sides.

Last year’s big money raker in Bangladesh was the somewhat less hot on histrionics ‘Hathat Bristi’ (sudden downpour) by Basu Chatterjee, a joint India-Bangladesh production starring Bangladesh actor Firdous and Priyanka Trivedi from India.

Some 14 films were made jointly in the last four years, among them productions bankrolled by the government. The first such an experiment was Gautam Ghosh’s 1992 film ‘Padma Nadir Maghi’ (the boatman on the river Padma).

The story of the hard lives of a boatman, his wife and her sister won Ghosh many awards: India’s National Award for Best Director, the UNESCO (U.N Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation Education) Award at Cannes, France, 1993.

“It was a wonderful experience making this film on a subject close to the heart of both the Bengals. I want to make more joint venture films as I faced no problems in working there,” Ghosh recalls.

Films like his reflect “our true cultural commonalty … that despite religious differences they all are Bengali-speaking people sharing the same ethos and problems,” the film-maker adds.

Other film-makers are happy that joint productions enable them to cast a wider net for actors.

Says Buddhadeb Dasgupta of his 1997 award-winning ‘Lal Darja’ in which he had Bangladeshi actors in lead roles, “In (West) Bengal it is very difficult these days to find proper artists to portray the characters we conceive and so I chose two accomplished artists from Bangladesh.”

He believes this “kind of cultural exchange between the two countries is quite a healthy sign.”

It’s not a new trend. Satyajit Ray had cast Babita from across the border in the lead in his film ‘Ashani Sanket’ (the famine) in the early seventies.

“I hope joint ventures will continue bringing the best out of the two industries,” said well-known Bangladeshi director Chashi Nazrul Islam in an interview during the Calcutta International Film Festival in December last year.

For Indian actors, the trans-border productions are both good money and good for the ego. Rituparna Sengupta, the most sought- after in the industry, says “this is one of the most beautiful things to have happened. I find it exciting to think that I can reach so many people.”

“Moreover since their films have such big budgets it is also monetarily gainful to work there,” she adds, disarmingly.

A senior official of the Eastern India Motion Pictures, which regulates the release of films, confirms. “The films made in Bangladesh are big budget … each costing up to one crore taka (2.5 million dollars) while in the ailing Bengali film industry, films are made at less than half that.”

But this has become a bone of contention, he indicated. Big budget, ‘made in Bangladesh’ productions outclass the films made in West Bengal on a tighter budget.

“It is impossible to compete,” says the official. Joint venture films should equally benefit artists and technicians in both countries, but many of the films released are “made almost entirely in Bangladesh with a few shots from the Bengal side as a token gesture”.

Last September, the Calcutta-based film actors and technicians called a boycott of all Indian producers who worked in Bangladesh unless they adhered to rules on joint production. Truce was negotiated only after the Indian and state governments assured the film fraternity of fair play.

Things are better this year, the industry says.

Biplab Chatterjee, actor and member of the Artists’ Forum, “We have nothing against joint ventures. We in fact welcome such initiatives but we are firmly against anything that affects our own struggling industry … I am happy that it has stopped now.”