Toward a New Frame for Regional Films: Manbhum Videos and the Other Side of (Indian) Cinema

Abstract

This article focuses on the production and mass circulation of locally produced videos in and across socially marginalized areas of Bengal. It emerges from the research conducted on the video industry located in Purulia District, West Bengal. These videos, known as “Manbhum videos,” signifying both place and idiom, are connected to video cultures proliferating across the Global South since the last decade. While new media cultures have become a crucial part of contemporary cinema studies, production of Manbhum videos (and videos produced in other local languages) point toward a new understanding of both cinema in India and categories like regional films. It raises questions regarding the ways in which “regional cinema” has been described so far, and the manner in which it may be redefined in the new media context. Such small-scale and localized video production in West Bengal and its circulation across disparate districts of India and Bangladesh, inform us that frameworks like “Bengali cinema” are deeply fragmented. Therefore, by studying the videos and its growth, this article shows in what way alternative settings and landscapes, narratives tropes, styles of performance and speech become pertinent in these videos, which effectively address a longer history of marginalization and political tussle.

The Islamic Subject of Home Cinema of Kerala

“…Home Cinema, as discussed in this article, is amateur fiction film. These movies are produced in low-resolution prints and are examples of greater accessibility to digital production at local levels in India in a process of movement of capital and labour (see Manuel, 1993; Menon & Nigam, 2007; Sundaram, 2010), producing its own variegated cultures of production and reception (see Mukherjee, 2016; Schleiter, 2014; Tiwary, 2015). The spinal plot line is interspersed with loosely connected comedy tracks, songs, and rare ‘attractions’ (Gunning, 1986) like ‘kitchen orchestra’ where the performers would enact a stage music show with kitchen utensils instead of musical instruments.…”

“…Similarly Tiwary (2015) points out how the local film practice in Malegaon also attempts to evoke new semiotic associations for Malegaon, a site otherwise etched in the discourse of communal violence. 2 Kumar (2013) has pointed out how the Bhojpuri film aesthetics influence mainstream Bollywood, aided by mass migrations from small towns to urban locations, while Mukherjee (2016) has emphasised how regional cinema, in this case the Manbhum videos, upsets the neat linguistic boundaries that are assumed in the concept of region and finds a complementarity between the porous genres of Manbhum videos as a cinematic idiom with the porous cultural and territorial boundaries of Manbhum as a region. These studies also point out how the local film practice gestures towards the dominant regional films as well as Bollywood but evolve a new idiom out of ‘creative fabrication’ (Prasad, 2011).…”

Region/Regional Cinema

“…Films are being made in languages such as Brij, Maithili, Garo, Bodo, Wancho, Moran, Rajbangshi, Konyak, Dakhni, etc., in hitherto invisible cultural contexts and uncharted geographies, most spectacularly redrawing 'the North East'. Cultural exposure and scholarly engagement sees the emergence of new small-scale enterprise, the industry in Malegaon (Tiwary, 2015), Manbhum videos in Purulia (Mukherjee, 2016), Home cinema in Malabar (Karinkurayil, 2019;Menon & Sreekumar, 2016) to name a few. Cinema's exploration of regions outside the pale of national/regional imaginaries is underway.…”