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Cinema and music

Cinema and music, in order

A first screening in a Bombay hotel, a silent film with Marathi title cards, the first talkie, an Oscar for a song sung in Telugu. Twelve dates from the record, the cinemas of many languages, and how Indian music is heard.

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The long view of Indian cinema: dates that are settled, the cinemas of many languages, and the music behind the films.

Film, in twelve dates

From the first screening to Cannes. Each line is from the record named in the sources, and none is a ranking.

  1. 1896On 7 July, Marius Sestier, an agent of the Lumière brothers, shows the first films in India at Watson’s Hotel in Bombay: five short films, among them Arrival of a Train. The Times of India calls it the “miracle of the century”.
  2. 1913Raja Harishchandra, by Dadasaheb Phalke, is released at the Coronation Cinematograph in Bombay on 3 May. Silent, about fifty minutes long, with Marathi title cards, it is often counted as India’s first full-length feature film.
  3. 1931Alam Ara, directed by Ardeshir Irani, is released on 14 March: India’s first sound film.
  4. 1954The National Film Awards are established. The first edition honours the films of 1953.
  5. 1955Pather Panchali, Satyajit Ray’s first film, is released. At Cannes in 1956 it wins the first Best Human Document prize.
  6. 1958Mother India becomes the first Indian film nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. It narrowly loses to Italy’s Nights of Cabiria.
  7. 1969The Dadasaheb Phalke Award is instituted. Its first recipient is the actress Devika Rani.
  8. 1992Satyajit Ray is given an Honorary Academy Award. He accepts it from a hospital bed in Calcutta, and dies on 23 April.
  9. 2002Lagaan is nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the 74th Academy Awards, on 24 March. It is the third Indian film to be nominated, after Mother India and Salaam Bombay!
  10. 2009A. R. Rahman wins two Academy Awards, for original score and for original song (“Jai Ho”), for Slumdog Millionaire, on 22 February.
  11. 2023At the 95th Academy Awards, “Naatu Naatu” from the Telugu film RRR (music by M. M. Keeravaani, lyrics by Chandrabose) wins Best Original Song, the first song from an Indian film to do so. The Elephant Whisperers, by Kartiki Gonsalves and Guneet Monga, wins Best Documentary Short.
  12. 2024Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine as Light wins the Grand Prix at Cannes, the first Indian film in the main competition since 1994.

Many cinemas, not one

India makes films in many languages, each with its own city, its own audience and, usually, a nickname borrowed from Hollywood. The nicknames are informal, and “Tollywood” is used for both Bengali and Telugu cinema.

Hindi

The language of Alam Ara, Mother India and Lagaan.

Mumbai · Bollywood

Bengali

The studios of Tollygunge, in south Kolkata, gave Bengali cinema the nickname; Telugu cinema took it up later. Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali is a Bengali film.

Kolkata · Tollywood (Tollygunge)

Telugu

The language of RRR, whose “Naatu Naatu” won the Oscar in 2023.

Hyderabad · Tollywood

Tamil

The nickname comes from Kodambakkam, the Chennai neighbourhood of the studios.

Chennai · Kollywood

Malayalam

Shaji N. Karun’s Swaham (1994) was the last Indian film in the main competition at Cannes before 2024.

Kerala · Mollywood

Kannada

Named for Karnataka’s sandalwood.

Bengaluru · Sandalwood

Marathi

The title cards of Raja Harishchandra, the 1913 film, were in Marathi.

Mumbai and Pune

Music, by how it is heard

Seven ways in, from the temple to the film studio.

Two classical traditions

Hindustani in the north and Carnatic in the south both build on raga, a set of notes and rules for moving through them. The Carnatic tradition’s “trinity”, Syama Sastri (1762 to 1827), Tyagaraja (1767 to 1847) and Muthuswami Dikshitar (1775 to 1835), were all born in Tiruvarur in the eighteenth century, and their songs still fill concert programmes. The instruments and the raga hours are on the instruments page.

Temple and prayer

Singing is at the centre of much worship. UNESCO lists three Indian traditions of sacred sound: Vedic chanting (2008), the Buddhist chanting of Ladakh (2012) and the Sankirtana of Manipur, ritual singing, drumming and dancing (2013).

Qawwali

Devotional song of the Sufi shrines, sung in a group with clapping and a harmonium. At the dargah of Nizamuddin Auliya in Delhi it is sung on Thursday evenings, and the poet and musician Amir Khusrau, Nizamuddin’s disciple, is traditionally associated with it.

The film song

For many listeners the film song is the way into Indian music. The playback singer, who sings on the soundtrack while the actor mouths the words, is central to it. Lata Mangeshkar (1929 to 2022), whose career lasted well over half a century, received the Bharat Ratna in 2001; A. R. Rahman won two Oscars in 2009 and M. M. Keeravaani one in 2023.

Rabindra Sangeet

The songs of Rabindranath Tagore, more than two thousand of them, are a living tradition in Bengal. He wrote the words of both India’s national anthem, drawn from his 1911 Bengali poem, and Bangladesh’s. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913.

Folk and dance

Bhangra in Punjab, lavani in Maharashtra, Bihu in Assam and garba in Gujarat, which UNESCO inscribed in 2023, are folk forms of song and dance, each rooted in a region and in the way it celebrates.

Cities of music

UNESCO’s Creative Cities Network names three Indian cities for music: Varanasi (2015), Chennai (2017) and Gwalior (2023).

Sources

  1. Marius Sestier — the Lumière screening at Watson’s Hotel, Bombay, 7 July 1896
  2. Raja Harishchandra (Britannica) — Phalke’s 1913 film
  3. Raja Harishchandra — the premiere at the Olympia Theatre on 21 April and the release on 3 May 1913
  4. Alam Ara (Britannica) — India’s first sound film, 1931
  5. Press Information Bureau: National Film Awards — established in 1954
  6. Dadasaheb Phalke Award — instituted in 1969; Devika Rani first
  7. Pather Panchali — released 1955; Best Human Document at Cannes, 1956
  8. Academy Awards acceptance speech database: Satyajit Ray, 1992 — the Honorary Award
  9. Mother India (Britannica) — the first Indian Oscar nominee
  10. List of accolades received by Lagaan — the nomination at the 74th Academy Awards, 24 March 2002
  11. A.R. Rahman wins two Oscars for “Slumdog” (The Hollywood Reporter) — 22 February 2009
  12. “Naatu Naatu” from “RRR” makes Oscar history (Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences) — the 95th Academy Awards
  13. “The Elephant Whisperers” wins 2023 Oscar for Best Documentary Short (Deadline) — Kartiki Gonsalves and Guneet Monga
  14. All We Imagine as Light (Festival de Cannes) — the 2024 competition
  15. Trinity of Carnatic music — the three composers and their dates
  16. UNESCO: India, Intangible Cultural Heritage — Vedic chanting, Buddhist chanting of Ladakh, Sankirtana of Manipur, Garba of Gujarat
  17. Hazrat Nizamuddin Dargah — qawwali at the dargah
  18. Lata Mangeshkar (Britannica) — her life and honours
  19. Rabindranath Tagore (Britannica) — the Nobel Prize in 1913 and the two anthems
  20. UNESCO: Lucknow joins the Creative Cities Network as a City of Gastronomy — the list of India’s Creative Cities and their years

Keep exploring

Instruments and ragas

Sixteen instruments in four families, and the ragas that belong to the hours of the day.

Cricket, as India plays it

The field explained, the trophies in order, and a game that belongs to the street as much as the stadium.

Languages

The twenty-two scheduled languages in their own scripts, and how many more the Census found.