by Asif Islam

Discussions about the state of contemporary Bangladeshi film inevitably lead to a sense of nostalgia for the good old days and of lament for the sorry state of the present. There seems to be almost universal consensus that film quality has been bumped down a notch or two to compete with the jiggling and gyrating of Bollywood films. Often observers put forward the argument that films are marketed to the lowest common denominator: lewd and suggestive portrayals of women and hearty doses of gratuitous violence.The demands of the market place may offer an easy answer thought perhaps not a complete one. It is true that the gangster ridden action films of the present, flanked on either side by local belles who seem always ready to burst into song and dance, do not come close to the romantic innocence with which Bangladeshi films were inaugurated in the mid 1950s.

It was 1956 to be precise when Mukh O Mukhosh, a love story embellished delicately with all the naiveté of that age, was released. The film making effort here was still very much in its infancy, and that film together with Akash O Mati and Edesh Amar Tomar, strongly gave the impression that film was still thought to be stage acting captured and recorded on celluloid. The versatility of the film medium was yet to be fully understood and employed here. Acting was directed very much towards a camera which remained more or less static , and the blocking techniques of stage acting, remained a staple of film direction. That film offered something quite different from the stage was recognised and put to use not so much n the matter of acting so much as in the scoring of the film. The film soundtrack was of paramount importance and clearly delineated film as something light and dreamy compared with the formality and rigidity of the stage.

The 1960s saw the creation of Rupban, a screen adaptation of a folk story, and clearly reflected an interest in indigenizing narrative forms for film. This set off a flurry of folk story adaptations though none were subsequently held in as high esteem as the pioneering film. This period also saw the development of more mature love films. Harano Din and Shurjo Snaan offered a greater depth in character and plot development than their predecessors although the camera still remained noticeable still. Nor in the area of cinematography was there much effort to contrast film perspectives from stage scenes. The camera continued to shoot all the protagonists on a full screen and unlike directors such Akira Kurusawa in Japan, actors did not walk in and out of focus (as they would on and off a set) but rather, the camera followed the action slowly and kept it within the confines of its perimeters. Scriptwriters developed plots whose twists and turns remained markedly domestic, whether the protagonists hailed from the cities or the country.

Rural settings were inaugurated with such films as Sujon Sokhi and Nayan Moni and script writing put an emphasis on capturing reality (if somewhat optimistically). Political satire, for example Jibon Theke Neya by the famed director Zahir Raihan, was successfully adapted to the screen complete and gave audiences riveting performances of a masterful screenplay. The adaptation of literary works like Shurjo Dighol Bari taken from Abu Ishaq'a novel and Saareng Bou portrayed in a rural setting and taken from Shahidullah Kaiser's work further demonstrated a willingness to engage different sorts of writing, though not necessarily different sorts of filming.

That changed in 1970 with Rangbaj, an action film with a decidedly more active camera and a dedicated fight choreographer. This film set the tone for the faster paced films of the next three decades while the more story oriented films drew from the existing tradition. By the seventies and the eighties our films had less to do with the narrative style, technique or form and more to do with effects and perks like songs, scantily clad women and foreign locations.Our story lines too haven't developed much. The genre of the period film, of horror films, of full on comedies and of motif bound films like RED, WHITE or BLUE do not exist here. What little innovation there has been with scripting. We have no equivalent in Bangladesh to the cinematographic experimentation that we find in foreign films like Gladiator and The English Patient. Instead, Bangladesh has produced dramas with a decidedly domestic set concerns or action musicals, to the detriment of films in general. Perhaps it would interesting if we tried to experiment with ideas, as in the epistemological questions raised by Matrix or variations in narrative technique and filming style that have produced such gems as Before the Rain. It isn't that the film culture is in decline; but rather that has been very stagnant. Which means, hopefully, that there is a lot of room for change and improvement.