Cinema as a soft power was the topic of discussion on the second day of the event CineTalkies, which was held on the University of Mumbai's Kalina campus on Saturday and had filmmakers Om Raut, Abhishek Jain and Sudipto Sen as speakers.
Gujarati filmmaker Jain, who has made critically acclaimed films like Bey Yaar (2014) and Wrong Side Raju (2016), said Indian filmmakers have not been very successful in using the medium of soft power. "Our cinema and filmmakers are running after Western stories and neglecting some fantastic stories from our own history and culture," he said. "We are still fascinated by Western superheroes and their stories, but never show the same interest in our history. It's like we have some kind of inferiority complex about our culture and history."
Discussing the cultural and political significance of cinema for any country, Jain added, "We have seen how the USA intelligently used their cinema as a soft power to propagate the idea of the American dream and consumerism to people all over the world. America doesn't have a long history. It's only a 300- or 400-year-old country, whereas India has a history of over 5,000 years. But for some reason our cinema has not been very successful in incorporating that history in its films."
Jain also pointed out that Indian cinema has not even scratched the surface of the country's vast trove of literature and culture. "For any nation, cinema is the most highly influential instrument of soft power," the director said. "And this soft power's most precious raw material is its culture and literature. We have this raw material in abundance, but we just don't want to use it to its full potential.
"I can understand if you don't want to make films on the Vedas and Upanishads because these are religious topics, but at least make films on our scientific innovations. It's sad that even after a hundred years of Indian cinema, we haven't made one film on Aryabhata's invention of zero. It's such an important invention that changed the world, but there is nothing about it in our pop culture."