Genres and Styles

Masala Films

Masala is a style of Indian cinema, especially in Bollywood, Cinema of West Bengal and South Indian films, in which there is a mix of various genres in one film. For example, a film can portray action, comedy, drama, romance and melodrama all together.

Many of these films also tend to be musicals, including songs filmed in picturesque locations, which is now very common in Bollywood films. Plots for such movies may seem illogical and improbable to unfamiliar viewers. The genre is named after the masala, a mixture of spices in Indian cuisine.

Parallel Cinema

Parallel Cinema, also known as Art Cinema or the Indian New Wave, is a specific movement in Indian cinema, known for its serious content of realism and naturalism, with a keen eye on the social-political climate of the times.

The movement was initially led by Bengali cinema (which has produced internationally acclaimed filmmakers such as Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen, Ritwik Ghatak, and others) and then gained prominence in the other film industries of India. Some of the films in this movement have garnered commercial success, successfully straddling art and commercial cinema. An early example of this was Bimal Roy's Two Acres of Land(1953), which was both a commercial success and a critical success, winning the International Prize at the 1954 Cannes Film Festival.

The neo-realist filmmakers were the Bengali filmmaker Satyajit Ray, closely followed by Ritwik Ghatak, Mrinal Sen, Shyam Benegal,Shaji N.Karun, Adoor Gopalakrishnan and Girish Kasaravalli Ray's films include The Apu Trilogy, consisting of Pather Panchali(1955), Aparajito (1956) and The World of Apu (1959). The three films won major prizes at the Cannes, Berlin and Venice Film Festivals, and are frequently listed among the greatest films of all time.