10 Titles Proving That 2021 Was a Great Year for Bangladeshi Cinema

Tareque Masud’s “Matir Moina” (2002) was the first film from Bangladesh that was screened in Cannes’ Director’s Fortnight section and won the FIPRESCI award jointly with Elia Suleiman’s “Divine Intervention”. But it is Abdullah Mohammad Saad’s second feature “Rehana Maryam Noor” (RMN, 2021), the first film from the South Asian cinephile nation to be officially selected at Cannes, competing in the ‘Un Certain Regard’ category. The director of the film also bagged the Jury Grand Prize from Asia-Pacific Screen Award where the lead actress Azmeri Haque Badhon earned the award of the Best Performance by an Actress. Badhon was also included in the short list of ‘Variety’s International Breakout Stars of 2021’. Bangladeshi actors Chanchal Chowdhury, Mosharraf Karim and Badhon have expanded their stardom in 2021 by acting in web series released in Indian OTTs. Jaya Ahsan continued her already established acting career both in Dhaka and Kolkata-based Indian industry. 

RMN was not only one commendable Bangladesh’s international success in 2021. Kamar Ahmad Simon’s fiction-looking non-fiction “Day After…” represented Bangladesh in competition at the high-ranking festival, IDFA: International Documentary Filmfestival Amsterdam. The prestigious Busan Film Festival 2021 got three submissions from Bangladesh – Mostofa Sarwar Farooki’s international film “No Land’s Man”, Mohammad Rabby Mridha’s debut feature “No Ground Beneath the Feet”, and RMN. After visiting the festival circuit in 2020 in London, Busan, Guttenberg, Singapore, Seattle and Turin in 2020, Rezwan Shahriar Sumit’s “The Salt in Our Water” got theatrical release in 2021. “Rickshaw Girl” is a new kind of experience for any Bangladeshi film since a US independent producer approached Bangladeshi director Amitabh Reza Chowdhury to make a film for them. 

Book Review: Cinema of Bangladesh: A Brief History (2020) by Fahmidul Haq

 By Panos Kotzathanasis 

The “story”, after highlighting the concept of “brief” mentioned in the title as a panoramic view on local cinema, begins with some general facts about the current situation of the industry, as much as audience tendencies regarding motion pictures. The next chapter deals extensively with the beginning of Bangladeshi cinema, a topic that is always hot no matter which country’s movies it refers to, but is even more complicated regarding Bangladesh, which was first a part of India, then of Pakistan, before it became independent. As such, Haq captures the story from the first exhibitions of East Bengal, eventually arriving to the name of Hiralal Sen, as he was the first film exhibitor, filmmaker and founder of the first cine-company in East Bengal, also commenting on why his film is not considered the ‘first’. The story of Sen emerges as one of the most interesting in the book, as it is intensely bound with the beginning of local cinema. Haq then brings us to the Nawab Family and the formation of the Dhaka East Bengal Cinematograph Society and their first titles, of which “The Last Kiss” takes center stage. 

The next chapter tracks the history of mainstream cinema with the name of “Mukh o Mukhosh” coming to the fore, with Haq dedicating a large part of the book both on the film and its director Abdul Jabbar Khan, also adding facts about the history of Bangladesh, which, undoubtedly, had an impact on local cinema as well. The creation of East Pakistan Film Development Corporation (now BFDC – Bangladesh Film Development Corporation) emerges as a rather important event in this chapter also, with the rest exploring cinema pre and post the Liberation War, essentially to today. A number of chapters emerge as rather interesting here. The 70s in particular offer a fascinating decade regarding cinema, with Haq following Alamgir Kabir’s classification of war, plagiarized, non-plagiarized and offbeat films, adding, however, two of his own, costume epics and gangster-based action movies. Also of note here is the reference to Nagisha Oshima’s documentary, “Rahman: Father of Bengal”, a very little known part of the Japanese filmmaker’s oeuvre. The surge of Urdu-language movies, the demise of the mainstream industry and the rise of the independent one, particularly due to the surge of B-grade ultra-violent titles that included soft porn scenes brings us to the next chapter, which deals almost exclusively with indie cinema. 

Bangladeshi cinema: Rise, decline and global

As Bangladesh reaches 50, its cinema is finally moving onto a global stage.

Bangladesh has both a substantial film culture and a modest film industry established in the middle of the 1950s. The industry finances were sound in the late 1960s and 1970s but started declining in the 1980s and 1990s. In the new millennium, the industry declined even further, but there have been some recent signs that the industry is reviving with a major contribution from the independent sector.

1970s: A vibrant industry

Immediately after the country’s independence in 1971, a new class of producers emerged. Some people suddenly became rich in this new disorganised country and started to invest in the film industry. Some saw it as a way to transform their black money into white, while others saw cinema as a means to make a lot of money in a short period of time. Because of the nature of the invested money, some negative elements entered into the industry — with plagiarised storylines one of them.

During this period, cinema arrived as the main entertainment medium for the new nation. The industry was vibrant and the business was good. The Pakistan government had stopped importing Indian films after the 1965 war and after independence, the government of Bangladesh stopped importing all South Asian films, including both Indian and Pakistani films. Only Bangla films were exhibiting in theatres with hastily made films sufficient to fulfill the public demand.

My Bicycle (2015): Indigenous Life Under the Advent of Modernity

"My Bicycle" (Mor Thengari) is the first feature film made in Chakma language, a language which is used by a large indigenous group in Bangladesh next to Bengali, which comprises 98 percent of the total population. This is also the debut feature of Aung Rakhine, a member of another indigenous group, Rakhine. The film tells the story of a Chakma family, the village the members of the family live in and their culture. It also depicts how modernity and its changing agents are making the simple Chakma lives complex.

According to Bangladesh census 2011, there live nearly 5,00,000 Chakma people in Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT), the south-eastern part of Bangladesh. This population is nearly 60% of total indigenous people who live in CHT and 0.33% of total population of Bangladesh. There are 14 ethnic communities in CHT, the Chakma are the largest, followed by Marma and Tripura, then the Mro and the Tanchangya. Some other groups are the Bawm (or Bom), the Chak (or Sak), the Khumi, the Khyang, the Kuki, the Lusai (or Mizo), the Murang, the Pamkho, and the Riang.

Kamol, a Chakma man comes back home from town after six months. During his absence, his wife Devi and his little son Debu struggled a lot yet managed to survive. Kamol lost his factory job along with the payments of the last months. However, he came back with a new bicycle which was identified as a new technology in the remote hilly Chakma village. Kamol thought of using the bicycle for generating revenue. He starts carrying people and goods from village to the nearer Bazar in exchange of small fares. This new earning source brings happiness to his family. He sends his son to school. He repairs his dilapidated house. Meanwhile, there is an accident during a trip and a passenger is injured. In a village court, it was decided he could carry only goods and not people anymore. Everything is going fine, however, until some muggers demand money as it was perceived he had become ‘rich’. He refuses to do so. In a bad morning, he finds his bicycle damaged and left under the hill. Shattered Kamol travels to town to repair the bicycle. While he is crossing the Kaptai Lake, he realizes another boat is approaching from the opposite direction towards the village with a new bicycle along with a television set and a motorbike.

The 20 Best Post-Liberation (1972-2000) Films from Bangladesh

 

Asad and Subarna in the film Ghuddi (1980)

Bangladesh started producing film regularly since mid-1950s when it was part of Pakistan. Due to the colonial military rule by the central West Pakistan, there was rise of Bengali nationalism and people of East Pakistan started revolting. The East did not get the power even though their political party Bangladesh Awami League got absolute majority in 1970 Pakistan election. The people of East got increasingly agitated and there was a military crackdown in the midnight of March 25, 1971 and the war started. Through the resistance of freedom fighters and the diplomatic and military support from India, Bangladesh got liberated on December 16, 1971 from Pakistan.

This article selects 20 best films in post-liberation (1972-2000) Bangladesh. The country had a vibrant mainstream film industry in 1970s and 1980s. Since 1990s, the industry started declining due to many internal and external factors. Meanwhile, since the mid-1980s, there was a slow but steady growth of independent cinema which started representing the national cinema of Bangladesh by documenting politics, culture and society, both in fiction and documentary genres and by participating in international festivals. Until mid-1990s, independent films were artisanal in look – short in length and technically ordinary; gradually they started to be more mature – full length in duration and comprehensive in film techniques. 

A Brief and Handy History of Bangladesh Cinema

This book is a snapshot of the first hundred and twenty years or so of cinema in Bangladesh. The shot is a panoramic one. It would require further studies on the part of an inquisitive mind interested in the details of this snapshot. The relevance of this work lies in the enquiry that it may arouse and the process of intellectual and methodical pursuit that it may stimulate about the subject.

Table of Content 

Introduction

Chapter 1: The Beginning

Chapter 2: Mainstream Cinema

Chapter 1: Independent Cinema

Epilogue

Available at

Available at Batighar and Pathak Samabesh, Dhaka

Online order in Bangladesh: https://www.boobook.co/shop/cinema-of-bangladesh-a-brief-history/?fbclid=IwAR3TDRUZjodiw4HaBdU49dMRVJAB6SS23d9reY6Eem_U5NfHSLO3FTHEMbY

For international readers: https://www.amazon.com/CINEMA-BANGLADESH-BRIEF-HISTORY-Fahmidul/dp/9849472006/ref=sr_1_5?dchild=1&keywords=Fahmidul+Haq&qid=1600456843&sr=8-5

The book is published by Nokta, Dhaka July, 2020

Price: BDT 485, $14.5

20 Great Bangladeshi Films of the 21st Century

After the advent of new technologies such as satellite TV, CD/DVD in 1990s and Internet streaming in 2000s, Bangladesh’s mainstream industry, which was once vibrant, started declining. Meanwhile, since the  mid-1980s, there was a slow but steady growth of independent cinema which started representing the national cinema of Bangladesh by documenting politics, culture and society, both in fiction and documentary genres and by participating in international festivals. Primarily these films were artisanal in look – short in length and technically ordinary; gradually they started to be more mature – full length in duration and comprehensive in film techniques. Since 2000 and onward, Bangladeshi cinema is trying to find its own voice internationally, which is often overshadowed by Indian Bengali Cinema that reached its peak by the contributions of Satyajir Ray, Ritwik Ghatak and others. In the new millennium, Bangladeshi cinema has elevated from the ‘artisanal’ to the ‘global’ stage. Also, there was an evolution in the themes of Bangladeshi Cinema – from rural to urban and from traditional-cultural archetypes to post-modern and post-globalized complex realities.

Bamboo Stories: Poetic and Humane

Berlin based director Shaheen Dill-Riaz's latest documentary 'Bamboo Stories' (বাঁশ বৈভব) is an ethnography of the people of North-Eastern Bangladesh who are segregated in the long-practiced divisions of labor -- loggers, rafters, retailers, wholesalers and lease holders, all are the part of the chain -- collecting bamboos from the forests in the hills and selling it in the market.

I liked the observational nature of the documentary and the approach of telling a humane story. I was amazed to see the creative use of the drone shots and was stunned by the background score which enhanced the depth of the story. The last sequence was excellent -- the way bamboos were brought down from the hill to the plane by using the strong current of the stream coming down from the hill.

Extraction: A White Man’s Rescue Mission in a Filthy South Asian City

At last Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh became the subject matter of a Hollywood action movie. After visiting a lot of African countries and Iraq or Afghanistan, the American culture industry found the existence of a small country (big in population size) in South Asia to explore a crime thriller. Though most of the actions of the movie occurred in Dhaka, apart from some plate shots, entire shooting took place in India and Thailand.

When the story of a Hollywood action/thriller movie crosses the border, it portrays a country as the villain’s habitat and a white man as the savior (he would be nearly a superman) of the victim. Under this formula, Dhaka is treated as the habitat of the villain, the drug lord Asif who kidnapped and held Ovi, the son of the drug lord from Mumbai, India for ransom. Tyler Rake (Chris Hemsworth), a black-market mercenary was hired (from Australia) to ‘extract’ the boy from the drug racket in Dhaka. He all alone, remotely backed by his team, rescued the boy and being severely injured, he fell down in the river from the bridge in the outskirt of the city, which was locked down by the law enforcing agencies with the order of the drug lord Asif.

Bangladeshi Films: Through the Lens of Professor Fahmidul Haq

[Raihana Sayeeda Kamal talks to Dr Fahmidul Haq to know the ins and outs of Bangladeshi films. Dr Fahmidul Haq is a professor of Mass Communication and Journalism department, University of Dhaka]

Transition of Bangladeshi film industry: Bangladeshi film industry evolved around late 1960 to 1970. Transitions took place from 1970 to early 2000. We assume that all 70s films were good but the reality is something different. During then, we didn't have VCR, and satellite connection. Our locals didn't have exposure to western movies. By the exposure to Bollywood and Hollywood movies through VCR and satellite connection, the film industry has faced a blow. Our audience shifted to their productions.

On golden age of films: There is a reason behind dubbing 70s as 'Golden age'. In the early 60s to 80s, most successful films belonged to historical genre or came from local Jatra -- Rupbaan, Sirajuddoula, Behula, Beder Meye Josna etc. People loved them because they had a comprehensive heroic and localised story line which are not being produced these days.  

Decline of golden age: The golden age started to decline in the late 80s or early 90s. During 80s, there was a technological shift and cultural shift.