Evolution: How The Indian Audiences Are Taking Their Brains To The Theaters Now

India has one of the largest film producing industries in the world and almost every year India leads the chart in the number of movies being made and released every year. The very first film was released 104 years by the legendary filmmaker Dadasaheb Phalke who made Raja Harsihchandra. The first film with sound was released in 1931 titled Alam Ara. Even though the age of cinema in our country is more than our country's independence, Indian Film Industry has struggled to find a place amongst the best.

Looking at things from the economic perspective, Bollywood makes a lot of money but it also loses a lot of money by generating useless and outdated content. While earlier, we saw the release of classics in the 40s, 50s, and 60s after 70s, Bollywood kind of lost track and started blindly copying Hollywood or films from other countries and released it in the theatres. The makers and the audiences are equally to be blamed for the sad state of cinema.

People wanted to have fun by cheap thrills and they were served just that. The 80s are probably the worst phase of Bollywood though there are some films of 90s that will also remain eternally pathetic. But that was the time when almost every Friday we would see a number of releases, actors doing 8 to 10 films a year and most of these films were ripped off of older Bollywood films or the Hollywood films (even the flop ones). 

Though it was during the 80s when we started seeing the art house-independent cinema movement taking its shape and filmmakers and actors like Naseeruddin Shah, Anupam Kher, Om Puri, Ketan Mehta, Smita Patil and Shabana Azmi etc. giving us films that reflected the state of the society and our nation. Hardly any of them captured the imagination of regular audiences. At a time when Steven Spielberg, Martic Scorcese, and James Cameron were redefining cinema we were busy with Taki-O-Taki or this:

In the 90s filmmakers like Mahesh Bhatt, Deepa Mehta and Ram Gopal Varma (though he's lost his ways since) gave some of the most hard-hitting films of our times. At this time, a new generation of filmmakers like Anurag Kashyap was stepping into the industry and we saw his films and numerous others banned by the CBFC or some political outfit. People were not ready to accept films that were based on reality and it was only if a big star would do a content-driven film, few would notice but hardly anyone would make the effort to go to the theatre and see the film.

We were surrounded by so much mediocrity that hardly anyone would give a chance to topical films. Even a big star led drama would flop. But, since last few years, we have seen a change and a surge is coming in terms of content-driven cinema. Gone are the days when the film stars and the makers would be in a comfort zone and cannot simply dance and dishoom their way to the theatres. Even the makers have realized that the audience is smarter and can't be taken for granted.

Too much of anything is bad and its the time the audiences realize that they have the power to bring in a change as at the end it's up to them whether a film works or not. But they should also be ready to accept change and adapting new stories and live in a practical world, something which the producers have only awoken to recently. Yes, the films are a mean of escaping into another world that entertains us but with time, the definition of entertainment has also changed.

The success of films like Gangs of Wasseypur, Piku, Shubh Mangal Savdhan, Shahid, Bareilly Ki Barfi, Pink, Lipstick Under My Burkha has already sounded the bugle that Indian Cinema is changing as well as the taste of its audience. Gone are the days when a star would simply romance the actress, fight some bad guys, crack some one-liners and emerge out a winner. The real winner is now the audiences. Though it'll still take some time, it's one of the best phases of Indian Cinema where content is prevailing and content is the king.