Cinema over the last hundred years has evolved to become the most impactful medium of mass communication, a powerful tool to express, emote, represent, influence, and communicate. Fiction or non-fiction, cinema can become a really powerful to represent or emulate past, present, or even the future. Apart from being a medium for entertainment, it both reflects and shapes the psyche of the society, and also acts as a disseminator of culture.
Advancements in technology have led to the democratization of cinema. New spaces, like the OTT platforms, for consuming films and videos are coming up and will greatly contribute to increasing the impact of films on the consumers and society. Cinema has often helped in becoming a catalyst for social change. Films usually draw heavily from reality and change according to the socio-political, historical, and economic situations of the society. The underlying politics, ideologies, and philosophies of the times it is set in play an important role when attempting to portray reality on screen. This reflection of power structures and ideological apparatuses are then interpreted by the audience as per their socio-cultural contexts and understandings.
Impact
In terms of radical political cinema, Marxist philosophy has been explored and portrayed in cinema since the beginning of the 20th century but became popular after World War II, through the works of Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein. This type of cinema was then carried forward by filmmakers like Jean-Luc Godard from France, Alfred Hitchcock from England, and Federico Fellini from Italy. Marxist cinema works as a means to spread the political ideology that challenges the fundamental concern of the capitalist framework and seeks an overall transformation in the structure of society. Cinema here, thus, works as an agent of transmission of the political message for the betterment of the exploited class.
Red cinema movement
In terms of radical movements, India has had a good amount of those. One of these was the Naxalite movement or Naxalism, which started in 1967 and still continues to exist in some areas of this country. It started as a struggle for peasant rights movement and against the feudal power structures in The Naxalbari village of West Bengal. It uprising soon turned violent due to the defensive actions by the state and transformed into an armed militant movement and spread to several parts of the country.The political consciousness nurtured by the Naxalite/Communist movement in Kerala finds representation in social realism cinema from Malayalam Film Industry, especially in the 1970’s and 80’s. These films deal with the themes of Naxalite movement, which started in the 60’s in Naxalbari, both directly and indirectly.
