Indian Parallel Cinema: 5 essential filmmakers from a seismic Indian cinema revolution

Indian Parallel Cinema, South Asia’s first post-colonial art film movement, came of age in the late 1960s. There had been precursors in the Bengali tradition of Satyajit Ray and Ritwik Ghatak that emerged in the mid to late 1950s, with Ray’s realist drama Pather Panchali (1955) finding an international festival audience. But it was at the end of the 60s that the acceleration of film societies, the risk taking of the Film Finance Corporation (FFC) and the publication of a film manifesto calling for a new cinema coalesced into an inexorable burst of creative energy. It unleashed a new wave of filmmakers and innovative films, which represented a distinct break in the provincial aesthetics, politics and themes of Indian cinema. Nothing would ever be the same again. 

Unfolding over four decades, Indian Parallel Cinema produced in excess of 200 films and had a widespread regional impact, merging the indigenous with the international. Parallel Cinema communicated new truths about women, caste and religion, narrating a history from below and leading to one of the richest and most creative moments in the story of global film. 

Here are five filmmakers who shaped the movement.

Key films: Bhumika / The Role (1977), Manthan / The Churning (1976), Suraj Ka Satvan Ghoda / The Seventh Horse of the Sun (1992), Mammo (1994)  

In its early years Parallel Cinema enjoyed limited commercial success. It was the films of Shyam Benegal, specifically his 1970s uprising trilogy – Ankur (1974), Nishant (1975) and The Churning (1976) – that would break through to audiences in cinema halls. Benegal’s films continue to be scrutinised for their supposed capitulation to what became known as ‘middle cinema’ – a kind of murky compromise between mainstream and alternative filmmaking. But the ‘middle cinema’ label detracts from what has been a very extraordinary career for Benegal. 

Although his early films demonstrated neorealist aesthetics, style was interchangeable. Films like Bhumika (1977) and Suraj Ka Satvan Ghoda (1992) pointed to Benegal’s ability to change his style depending on the subject matter. Based on the life of the famous Marathi actor Hansa Wadkar and exploring the struggles she faced within a patriarchal culture both at home and within the film industry, Bhumika seamlessly fuses elements of classical Indian cinema with the Hollywood biopic. 

The uprising trilogy evidenced a more didactic style, best exemplified in the social realism and political activism of The Churning, which details a story of political empowerment through the communal efforts of poor farmers in a Gujarat village, as they establish a milk co-operative. Perhaps Benegal’s greatest triumph is his later trilogy on Indian Muslim women – Mammo (1994), Sardari Begum (1996) and Zubeidaa (2001) – made at a time when Hindu nationalism was gaining ground. 

Ultimately, it is women who are often at the centre of many of his best films – be it in front of the screen (such as actor Shabana Azmi) or behind it (such as writer Shama Zaidi) – and although one can question to what extent onscreen representations were truly feminist, the continual choice to detail the lives of women and the issues they faced in contemporary India helped to redefine how women should be represented in Indian cinema.

Key films: Interview (1971), Ek Din Pratidin / And Quiet Rolls the Dawn (1979), Akaler Shandhaney / In Search of Famine (1980), Khandhar / Ruins (1983)

Mrinal Sen, a pivotal figure in Parallel Cinema, made his debut with Raat Bhore / The Dawn (1955), released the same year as Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali. While Ray quickly found his humanist style, Sen spent over a decade experimenting, finally breaking through with Bhuvan Shome (1969), a landmark film that signalled the emergence of Parallel Cinema. Shot on a low budget, it broke new ground with its innovative mixed media aesthetic of freeze frames, elliptical editing, incongruous voice over and sharply satirical tone. Likewise, the subject matter was equally unconventional: a rigid bureaucrat is transformed for the better through a brief encounter with a free-spirited village girl. 

Alongside figures like Arun Kaul, Sen advocated for an alternative distribution-exhibition system to support independent films. Sen’s engagement with the political turmoil of Calcutta in the early 1970s sparked his most creative period, beginning with Interview (1971), a non-linear exploration of unemployment and youth unrest, and which would lead to a quartet of dissenting political films. 

Interview marked the start of a highly experimental phase, blending documentary realism with avant-garde techniques, which became Sen’s signature hybrid style. His films from this era often broke with traditional narrative forms, challenging both cinematic conventions and political complacency. A recurring theme in Sen’s work is his critique of middle-class hypocrisy, explored incisively in The Absence Trilogy – Ek Din Pratidin (1979), Kharij / The Case Is Closed (1982), and Ek Din Achanak / Suddenly, One Day (1989). 

British film critic Derek Malcolm was one of the few to champion Sen’s films in the West, helping his work achieve broader recognition at film festivals internationally.

Key films: Agraharathil Kazhutai / Donkey in a Brahmin Village (1977), Amma Ariyan / Report to Mother (1986), Cheriyachante Kroora Krithyangal / The Evil Deeds of Cherian (1979)

In a film movement you always need a few rebellious mavericks to shake things up and keep everyone on their toes. Thankfully John Abraham seemed to pick up where Ritwik Ghatak left off, using his films to repeatedly paint damning critiques of a putrid, rotting system in which all kinds of orthodoxies like caste, religion and feudalism remained uncomfortably entrenched. Kerala-born filmmakerAbraham trained at the prestigious Film and Television Institute of India and was part of a new wave of auteur minded directors. He only made four films, each of them singular and definitive in their own right. The breakthrough feature, Donkey in a Brahmin Village (1977), was an innovative allegorical satire that took aim at caste prejudices, and is today a much beloved cult film in India. 

The Odessa Collective formed in 1984 by Abraham and his friends was an attempt to subvert the hegemonic distribution-exhibition structure, and the budget for their first film, Report to Mother (1986), was raised through money collected from screenings of films in villages. It was Abraham’s final film before his death, a political masterpiece and – in its quasi-documentary style and wholly independent funding and distribution – arguably the closest Parallel Cinema came to replicating the radical aesthetics of Latin American ‘Third Cinema’. 

Key films: Uttarayanam / Throne of Capricorn (1975), Kummatty / The Bogeyman (1979), Thampu / The Circus Tent (1978), Esthappan / Stephen (1980)

Films from the south of India have always been ahead of the game. Even with the birth of Parallel Cinema, it was the regional flourishes in West Bengal, Karnataka and Kerala that provided the movement with its true identity in terms of innovation. Govindan Aravindan was possibly the most accomplished visual filmmaker of the Parallel Cinema movement; his films were resolutely poetic, lyrical and technically astute, but they also communicated something elemental about the communities, people and landscapes that he enveloped us in. Aravindan’s painterly sensibilities were finely tuned by the pictorial eye of his regular DoP, the gifted Shaji N. Karun.

Films like Kummatty (1979), Esthappan (1980) and The Circus Tent (1978) have the feel of semi-observational documentaries, but they are equally metaphysical, tactile and rhythmical experiences. The Circus Tent, one of Aravindan’s best films, and recently restored in 4K, is a visual feast for the eyes, but what makes the episodic narrative altogether affecting is the lonely lives of the circus troupe. Each character’s quiet longing and unspoken struggles are woven into the rhythm of their transient existence. Aravindan’s films stand out because of their quiet, honest portrayal of life, where the beauty of everyday moments speaks louder than words.

Key films: Duvidha (1973), Mati Manas / The Mind of Clay (1983), Siddheshwari (1989), Satah Se Uthata Aadmi / The Man Rises from the Surface (1980)

Director Mani Kaul never approved of the labels ‘experimental’ or even ‘avant-garde’ that became associated with his work. In fact, Kaul was much more in favour of the term ‘Parallel Cinema,’ as it implied equality with mainstream cinema rather than being relegated to a marginalised cinematic ghetto. Kaul’s film style is characterised by non-linear narratives, poetic visual aesthetics and deep engagement with Indian art, expressly painting and music. His films defied conventional storytelling, focusing instead on mood, rhythm and sensory experience.

Many of Kaul’s best films, such Uski Roti / Our Daily Bread (1969), Duvidha and Siddheshwari, blend abstraction with minimalism, striving for a kind of philosophical inquiry into the realms of what he labelled a sensuous cinema. Duvidha is one of his most acclaimed works, a subversive ghost story that deploys long takes and striking painterly compositions to conjure a haunting atmosphere. 

Like many Parallel Cinema filmmakers, Kaul turned to contemporary Indian writers for inspiration, but also to European art and culture such as Matisse, Dostoyevsky and Bresson. Arguably Kaul’s greatest work is Satah Se Uthata Aadmi (1980), an audacious metaphysical film exploring a man’s emergence from the surface of his external world into deeper realms of consciousness and thought.

A restoration of Manthan / The Churning screens at the 68th BFI London Film Festival.

Rewriting the Rules: Pioneering Indian Cinema after 1970 runs at the Barbican from Thursday 3 October to Thursday 12 December 2024.

Omar’s forthcoming book on Indian Parallel Cinema will be published by Bloomsbury in February 2025 and is available for pre-order.

The Circus Tent is available on Blu-ray from Second Run.