Schulze: Humanist and Emotional Beginnings

'Films made in Bombay' have a much longer and more complex history than 'Bollywood'; and what is widely projected as 'authentically Indian' is a politicised and ideologically contested space since the first decades of the 20th century.How did the historical audiences in Bombay actually respond to the first "Indian films", to an Indian filmmaker's mediation of ideas and feelings of 'being Indian'? In what way did for instance in 1913-18 the first long narrative films by Dhundiraj Govind Phalke convey patriotic sentiments?These are some of the questions tackled by Brigitte Schulze, a sociologist and activist of Indian cinema cultures since the late 1980s. Exploring the beginnings of Bombay's cinema means to enter spaces largely occupied by orientalist or nationalist myths; however, once these are critiqued her discursive and contextualising approach brings into light long forgotten visions and landscapes of a 'cinematographic humanism' beyond caste, class, gender or nation-state.