Marathi cinema: Notes towards a liminal history

Abstract

Marathi cinema is a prominent regional film industry located in Mumbai, Pune and Kolhapur in western India. Since its early history, this film industry has evolved within a network of performance forms like the Marathi theatre, folk music and dance, and devotional singing (abhanga and kirtan), and the inter-exchange of personnel between these cultural formations. When the state of Maharashtra was constituted in 1960, this networked formation became even more prominent, and had to negotiate the rising competition from the more dominant Hindi cinema. Marathi cinema also had to contend with the patronage of Marathi audiences for other artistic forms like the theatre and folk performances. The attempt here is to theorize this state of in-betweenness through a spatial detailing and critical mapping of industrial tendencies, textual practices and regional entrenchment. The questions that informs this study are directed to understand regional cinema in India, and its manifestations over the decades of 1960 to 1980. Specifically, the article forwards some propositions to the ideas of: how can the history of Marathi cinema be situated against the dominant and collocative national Hindi cinema industry, with which it shares a common geography of filmmaking, exhibition and audiences? And how the concepts of social and cultural space can be extended to analyse some distinctive historical tendencies of the Marathi cinema? This analysis proposes a dialectics of space for a regional Marathi film practice, which is confirmed by a reading of films, anecdotal biographies, archival materials and trade journals.

Localization, diversification and heterogeneity: Understanding the linguistic and cultural logics of Indian new media

“…This leaves very little room for regional films that are already facing stiff competition from Hollywood and Bollywood (the Hindi film industry). The situation is especially grim in the Marathi film industry’s case, as it competes with Bollywood, sharing Mumbai as the common site of production, exhibition and even audiences (see Ingle, 2017). As Ingle (2017) points out, Marathi cinema also had to struggle for attention between 1960 and 1980 when Marathi audiences preferred other forms, like the folk shows and theatre.…”

“…The situation is especially grim in the Marathi film industry’s case, as it competes with Bollywood, sharing Mumbai as the common site of production, exhibition and even audiences (see Ingle, 2017). As Ingle (2017) points out, Marathi cinema also had to struggle for attention between 1960 and 1980 when Marathi audiences preferred other forms, like the folk shows and theatre. Absorbed within the linguistically demarcated state of Maharashtra in 1960, the Marathi cinema’s proximity to Hindi or ‘national’ cinema in Mumbai led to an unceasing struggle between ‘national concerns and regional representations’ (Ingle, 2017: 200).…”

Peripheral Creator Cultures in India, Ireland, and Turkey

“…We argue that India, Turkey, and Ireland emerge as a digital periphery wherein the production and distribution relations among international companies, transnational media conglomerates, and local elites marginalize the cultural production in SME and its economic potential despite its size and scale. For example, Indian regional language creators struggle for visibility and audience as they face overwhelming competition with the Hindi-language content market (Hardy, 2010; Ingle, 2017; Mehta, 2020). Despite being among the top TV drama exporters in the world (Kaptan & Algan, 2020), the SME industries in Turkey have a peripheral status as creators, unlike the legacy media industries, do not have access to professional translation and dubbing services, appealing predominantly to Turkish-speaking audiences, and hindering their ability to compete in the global SME market.…”