Introduction

The years proceeding the dawn of cinema in India were witness to the growth of musical dramas, the
Paris theatre, the drama companies of Madras, and the Jatra in Bengal. Music, dance, song were an
integral part of these performing tradition; this was the heritage of Sanskrit drama and later popular
Folk performing traditions; such as the Ram lila, The Ras Lila, The Nautanki and The Thirukoothu.In
painting the calendar art of Raja Ravi Varma and others was well-known and stage sets incorporated
some of the design and color of this new art form.
Cinema has become the most influential art. Form of 20th century, from its marginal beginnings.
India holds emient position in Film making in the world. Cinema was three simple means of mechanical
recording preserving and reproducing moving visual images with the development of film technology,
the art of cinema developed a language of its own. Cinema and Films are used inter changeably but
there is a difference between these two terms. Cinema has specific means to create imaginary time and
space, and utilization of these means defines how cinematic a Film is. Imaginary time can be created
through movement by means of montage. Films are made of stories dance, music, drama, photography,
painting, architecture and many other things that we call cinema.
Among the numbers crowd that watched the first screening at Bombays Watson Hotel with almost
Fascination was a photographer named Harishchandras Bhatwadekar .He ordered for a moving picture
camera from London, and when it arrived took it along to a Gardens, and shot the match live. It is
significant that the cinema had its beginnings in India almost at the same time as in the other major
films producing countries. Indeed, barely six months after the first Lumiere Brothers cinematograph
projected moving picture on to a screen in a perish basement, and two years after Edisons unvention of
the kinetoscope in New York. Just as Indian photographers and studies proliferated soon the
introduction of the camera in 1840, so arrival of the motion picture attracted a large number of business
people, artists and craftspeople into Films production and Exhibition. Photographers in particular took
to the new enterprise with enthusiasm.
* The pioneers: The Lumiere Brothers
The Cinema is an invention without a Future declared Louis Lumiere who together with his brother,
Auguste, pioneered what was to develop into an international culture industry. The Lumiere brothers
were the inventors of the Cinematographe, a compact and portable machine that with a few
adjustments could be used as a camera or projector or printing machine. As professional photographers
themselves, Cinema of photography; hence they sought to capture from a single a train to, in brief
actualities such as: the arrival of a train, ladies and soldiers on wheels. Like still photographs, these
living photographic pictures were no more than attems to reproduce reality.
* Realism and soviet cinema
The cinema of realism climaxed in the work of the early Russian films-markers, especially that of
V.I.Pudovkin and Sergei Eisenstein. Eisenstein was not only a prostatic films marker of the revolution but
also a film theorist. His materialist masterpieces, battleship. Potemkin, Ivan the terrible and others
Pudovkin identified five basic types of montage: contrast parallelism, symbolosma, simultaneity and liet-
motif .He developed theory of the interaction between shots variously called relational editing markers
and theorists include Lev kuleshob, Vertov, and Devzhenko: a major concern of the Films makers of the
early soviet cinema was ideology and the socialist state. Their films had the appearance of a
documentary style.
* Pioneers of Indian cinema
Dadassaheb Phalke
One of the pioneers of the silent feature films in India was Dhundiraj Govind Phalke, a Bombay
printer photographer, painter, and magician. It is reported that he was converted to cinematography
when he saw the films, like of Christ, at a Christmas cinema show.
Only a few Scatterd fragment of Phalkes silent films are extant .The overall structure of each films is
forever lost, but the fragments show a fine pictorial sense and also remarkable a vast range of
techniques including animation. He experimented with color, via tinting and toning for some of the
other films markers of the twenties and thirties.
In south India as in most other parts of the country, the mythological genre held sway. The foundation
for a flourishing film industry in south India was laid by R.Nataraja Mudaliar, a businessman trained in
cinematography in poone. During the silent Era over a thousand films of various genres were made in
India; however, only ten of them survive.
* Types of films
1. Commercial cinema
It primarily aims at providing entertainment to the people .It includes the ingredients of popular
cinema. For example, films like Sholay.
2. Art cinema
It is more realistic and relevant to the need of the people and society. National films Development
Corporation provided institutional aid for the production of these films.
3. Documentary films
Documentary dramatizes an idea or therne.It uses the factual material in order to dramatize its idea
tells its simple story in terms of human interests. Something also can be exhibited in schools, villages
and labor areas through mobile vans so that a large number of children can take advantages of these
films.
As Expressed by Goswami,
Making films children is a harder task than making films for adults. The producer has to take great care
at every step only the best should be shown to children.
* Impact of cinema on society
The Three terms Impact, cinema and society are extremely complex and much too comprehensive
to take at surface-value. The term impact is frequently used synonymously connotative meaning point
to an long-lasting .A further complication arises when one realizes that an impact can be weak,
moderate or strong, that it can relate to the psychological and even physical.
The term cinema is equally complex today, with television, video, cable and satellite TV vying with
each other to screen films on the small screen. Moreover, there are so many genres of cinema, each
genera perhaps having an impact of its own Horror Films for instance, might have the impact of
frightening viewers, and slapstick comedies of entertaining and relaxing them. The third term society is
an infinitely more complex phenomenon. The term takes within its compass all social institutions. How
does one asses the Impact of cinema on such an all-encompassing phenomenon? For several decades
now, Impact or effect studies have been narrow psychological studies on the effect of violence and
sex in specific groups such as school children, college and university youth. Most such studies have been
carried out in the United States. In Indian Institute of Mass communication New Delhi, conducted a
sociological study on the cinema.
* Ethics of Cinema
While censorship is imposed by the authorities and the law, the matter of ethics is imposed by
individuals on their own professionals like advertisers and public relations practitioners have drawn up
codes of ethics for themselves but journalists, film producers, radio and television broadcaster in India
have yet to agree on a common set of ethical practices in their respective media professions.
The need for ethics in cinema and the other mass media arises from the fear that children and sensitive
adults might be harmfully influenced by certain portrayals and action. Film makers must be concerned
about the possible influence on individuals and groups of their artistic efforts. For instance the
stereotypical portrayal of women and minorities in Indian Films could help to reinforce cultural
stereotypes rather than roles in society. This is where ethics comes in: a concern for sensitives in films
mentis for family viewing; the insertion of pornographic sequences in Films have been already censored;
the portrayal of excessive violence for is irrelevant and unnecessary; there is a long tradition of Indian
films markers of plagiarizing Hollywood Films, something shot by shot. These Cloned versions are
palmed off as original Indian language films.
* The central Board of films certification
The central board of films cancers is set up by the central Government under the powers granted it by
the cinematography rules 1958. The board is headed by a chairman, appointed by the central more than
nine members. Presently, there are offices at Bombay, Madras Calcutta and Trivandrum, with Bombay
as the head quarters.
A Films producer has, in the first place, to submit an application for a certificate to the per reel. The
examining committed consists of a member from the advisory panel and an examining officer in the case
of short film, while in the case of a feature films four members from the advisory panel and an examined
must be complete in every sense, with the background music and sound effect duly recorded on the
films itself.
* Conclusion
The popular attitude to cinema as a means of mass-entertainment has its origin in the type of films
made up to the fifties in India. As right from the beginning cinema in India was aimed at the lowest
common denominator and became primarily concerned with providing entertainment. Even when well-
known writers became involved with camera, they deliberately changed the quality of their writing .It is
only in the last decades or so that intellectuals have begun and associating actively with the making of
films and thereby raised the status of cinema to an art form.
As Roberge remarks,
While cinema is acknowledged as a disseminator of popular culture, the contributory role of the
cinema in cultivating and also shaping culture is not acknowledged and is perceived as a mere
instrument or channel