Like most other places in the world, film exhibition began in Bangladesh (in the then East Bengal) at the end of the 1890s; like much of Asia, silent film production began here during the 1900s and sound film production in the 1950s (in the then East Pakistan).The establishment of film theatres began here in the 1910s, but the production of theatrical features started as late as the 1950s. It took a whole half-century for film to be assimilated into the then East Bengali cultural environment. The reasons for such a long period of film/culture adaptation in East Bengal are not the concern of this article. Rather, the aim in this piece is to examine possible starting points of Bangladesh film history. This can help us get an idea how East Bengalis appropriated cinema in the early decades of this century as well how the survey historians of cinema of Bangladesh re-constructed this period using their conventional understandings and methods of writing the history of a national cinema.
The cinema of Bangladesh is one of the least discussed Asian cinemas, so debates about issues such as its originating moment are still in their infancy. As part of a broader endeavour of articulating a framework within which Bangladesh cinema can be analysed, this article asks: "When did Bangladesh(i) cinema begin?" Previous historians of Bangladesh cinema, who are generally concerned only with theatrical feature film production, are in consensus in answering this question: they locate the beginning of Bangladeshi cinema with the making of The face and the mask in 1956, and call this the "first" theatrical feature produced in the then East Pakistan/East Bengal. However, there are other less-celebrated "beginnings" of cinema in Bangladesh, in the early decades of the twentieth century. I wish to suggest that these were not found suitable as the starting point of the history of cinema in this land, because these events could not be appropriated within the dominant discourse of national history in contemporary Bangladesh, the nationalist-heroic strand propagated since the emergence of the idea of an independent nation-state called "Bangladesh" in the late-1960s. This article will attempt to unveil the ideological stances which have dictated that choice of innocent-looking "beginning" of this non-Western "national cinema".
The cinema of Bangladesh is one of the least discussed Asian cinemas, so debates about issues such as its originating moment are still in their infancy. As part of a broader endeavour of articulating a framework within which Bangladesh cinema can be analysed, this article asks: "When did Bangladesh(i) cinema begin?" Previous historians of Bangladesh cinema, who are generally concerned only with theatrical feature film production, are in consensus in answering this question: they locate the beginning of Bangladeshi cinema with the making of The face and the mask in 1956, and call this the "first" theatrical feature produced in the then East Pakistan/East Bengal. However, there are other less-celebrated "beginnings" of cinema in Bangladesh, in the early decades of the twentieth century. I wish to suggest that these were not found suitable as the starting point of the history of cinema in this land, because these events could not be appropriated within the dominant discourse of national history in contemporary Bangladesh, the nationalist-heroic strand propagated since the emergence of the idea of an independent nation-state called "Bangladesh" in the late-1960s. This article will attempt to unveil the ideological stances which have dictated that choice of innocent-looking "beginning" of this non-Western "national cinema".
