What is parallel cinema?

The Writers and Readers Café at the Arts Council, Karachi owes a lot to Dr Tanveer Anjum who is the moving force behind weekly gatherings that discuss art and culture. She is a poet and teacher with multiple poetry collections to her credit.

Recently, Dr Anjum invited me to speak about parallel cinema at the Arts Council Library. I began my discussion with an attempt to define the concept of parallel cinema. There is always a problem with definitions as people tend to define things in their own manner of preference. Some say that parallel cinema is the same as ‘art cinema’ or ‘new wave’ cinema that started in the 1960s or 1970s, but I tend to look at it differently.

First, we need to see what it is parallel with or to. If you have a parallel line, it must have another line that goes parallel – so what is that other parallel line? The other line is popular cinema. If we outline some features of popular cinema, perhaps it will be easier for us to understand parallel cinema. Popular cinema appears to be essentially for profit as it appeals to popular demand for entertainment which may lap up the lowest common denominator. To generate and maximize profit, popular cinema may resort to several formulas.

Love triangles, domestic intrigues, unfulfilled individual desires, unbelievable action sequences, and a larger-than-life hero are common formulas for popular cinema. These formulas get varying treatments from different directors to add flavour and spice to the story. Dance routines and song numbers in Indian popular cinema enhance its appeal to common viewers who gawk at gyrating hips and gaze at navels. There may be other features of popular cinema; in summary, it tries to amuse and entertain to generate and maximize profit. In Neil Postman’s words, it is like ‘amusing ourselves to death’.

Parallel cinema is primarily not for profit, though it may end up generating some. It is an umbrella term that may subsume various movements in world cinema in the past hundred years or so. From the realist cinematography of the early Soviet period including names such as Eisenstein, Kulishov, Pudovkin, and Dziga Vertov, to the Italian neorealist cinema and the French new wave, I would like to call them various streams of parallel cinema which were essentially not for profit.

Be it the Iranian New Wave Cinema or the Indian social films of the 1950s and 1960s, and the Art Film movement of the 1970s that Shayam Benegal and Govind Nihalani fathered in India – these are all part of parallel cinema. It does not believe in popular appeal for the sake of just amusement and entertainment; neither does it add flavour and spice to hit the jackpot with a box office success. In India, it may have some dances and songs but mostly they add to the main narrative of the film. For example, there are some good dances in the film ‘Saheb, Bibi aur Ghulam’ which was a milestone in parallel cinema in the 1960s.

The same applies to the 1982 art film ‘Bazaar’ by Ganga Sagar Talwar (Sagar Sarhadi) having good songs; I would include it in the category of parallel cinema. Most of the films in parallel cinema have a distinct element of class conflict and class struggle. An advanced or more powerful class of people exploits another and parallel cinema exposes this class-based discrimination. It may also involve other discriminations such as gender-based or caste-based exploitation and violence. Parallel cinema mostly exposes discrimination and is committed to social change. Parallel cinema may also include films that encourage people to fight for social change.

Some films of popular cinema also expose discrimination and show people fighting for their rights – such as Amitabh Bachchan movies – but they employ certain formulas that include a love story and a larger-than-life hero who cavorts with her love interests and also fights against the villains. That is why most Amitabh movies do not fall into parallel cinema even if they have some elements of it. An early Amitabh movie is ‘Saudagar’ (1973) which may pass for parallel cinema in which a shrewd husband dupes an unsuspecting woman (Nutan) for material gain and dumps her.

Parallel cinema exposes social injustices in a more realistic manner than its popular counterpart. It also includes films that facilitate its viewers to develop a better social and societal understanding of problems rather than making it an individual issue. At times, it also uses symbolic displays of social change such as in the film ‘Jalsa Ghar’ by Satyajit Ray the old nawab represents an entire declining class of feudal lords who refuse to change even at the cost of their own lives. In ‘Saheb, Bibi, aur Ghulam’, the opening scene shows a large mansion under demolition. A new factory will emerge on the same space signifying a transition from an agrarian and feudal economy to an industrial and modern age.

Parallel cinema does not only focus on class discrimination; a gender lens is also a significant feature. From one of the pioneering films in parallel cinema ‘Achhut Kannya’ (Untouchable Girl) in 1936 to ‘Laapataa Ladies’ (Lost Ladies) of 2023, women’s issues have remained a central focus in most films of parallel cinema. In ‘Achhut Kannya’ (later remade as ‘Sujata’ by Bimal Roy in 1960) a lower-caste Hindu girl played by Devika Rani faces discrimination, though she has full support from her lover played by Ashok Kumar. In 1960, Nutan played Sujata and delivered a superb performance as the girl.

Overall, parallel cinema has a humanist approach to people’s problems without indulging in shouting matches between a hero and a villain which have become the hallmark of popular cinema. Most of the films in the parallel category do not have a happy or tragic ending that normally popular films have. For example, one of the most successful films commercially was Sholay (1975) which shows discrimination and violence. But it is not parallel cinema as it has two extraordinary fighters – Amitabh and Dharmendra – who fight off dozens of bandits. The film shows a tragic end when one of the fighters dies in the gun battle.

Mehboob Khan’s 1942 movie ‘Aurat’ (later remade as ‘Mother India' in 1957) also shows a bandit but he loses his life when his own mother shoots him. Though these films do have dance and song numbers, I would include them in parallel cinema. Most parallel cinema movies have an open ending which is neither happy nor tragic but shows an end to a particular chapter in the lives of the people portrayed. Films by Ritwik Ghatak and Mrinal Sen also have open endings that are neither happy nor tragic.

More than amusement and entertainment, parallel cinema tries to offer an intellectual stimulus to its viewers to change things after achieving a better understanding of the challenges at hand. These issues may include income disparities, unfair distribution of resources in society, discrimination on the basis of caste, colour, community, or creed, political disenfranchisement of certain people, gender-based victimization, and of course brutality of the state and its functionaries. Indian films ‘Hazaar Chaurasi ki Maa’ (1998) by Govind Nihalani, ‘Haider’ (2014) by Vishal Bhardwaj and ‘Chakravyuh’ (2012) by Prakash Jha all expose state brutality.

Why don’t we have parallel cinema in Pakistan? The answer lies in lack of freedom of expression. For alternative or parallel voices to thrive you need a conducive atmosphere that is possible only in fully functional democracy at all levels. You need an independent and responsible judiciary that makes sure that all voices are heard and all parallel films get a fair chance of play at cinema houses. In Pakistan, even an innocuous film such as ‘Zindagi Tamasha’ is unable to be publicly screened.

The writer holds a PhD from the University of Birmingham, UK. He tweets/posts @NaazirMahmood and can be reached at:

mnazir1964@yahoo.co.uk