[Reader-list] Indian Animation: a history?

[sukanya ghosh]

Indian Animation: a history?
----------------------------


The nature of my research and project centre around the question of an 
animation history in India. The problem situates itself with the asking 
of the question – where is our animation history and indeed is there 
one? I am an artist and animator and many things besides and the nature 
of my work has led me to investigate a little closely into tracing a 
sort of historical overview of animation within India. On finishing Art 
College and progressing to study animation at NID (the National 
Institute of Design) I remember, how as students we were confronted with 
being inducted into a discipline which did not seem to have a very long 
lineage. At the time, NID (the national institute of design) was fast 
approaching 30 years of existence and it seemed a shame that there was 
no public memory of all the works that had been produced over the years. 
Almost all other disciplines presume a certain basic tour through a 
history as an intrinsic part of the curriculum, and it seemed very 
strange to me that there was no such thing as far as animation. The 
seeds of this project surfaced with this idea, albeit manifesting itself 
as a concrete study more than twelve years hence.

The plot thickens with the idea of film history in India. Now animation, 
contrary to a certain popular belief is not entirely about cute bunnies 
and ‘caricature’. The word itself derives from the Latin verb ‘animare’ 
which means to give life. Animation film history runs parallel to the 
history of the moving image. In fact some would have it that while the 
Lumiere brothers took the innovation of cinema to a ‘realist’ stream, 
Inventors and innovators like Emile Kohl and George Melies took the path 
of ‘trick’ imagery and fantasy. Animation as we know it has moved along 
this tenuous path of various ‘trickfilms’, inventive gadgetry and 
experimentation – all with the purpose of moulding of manipulating image 
movement and time to create a different semantic pattern. It is 
interesting that this excitement with a new medium did in fact take 
place in India as well. In a country where we have no dearth of story 
telling methods, the cinematograph and the invention of cinema made way 
for various pioneers to experiment. Dadasaheb Phalke is credited with 
creating the first Animation film as early as 1912. The New Theatres 
joined the fray and soon followed with their own animation film as did 
Prabhat Film Company and Gemini studios etc. The really early history of 
Indian animation makes it even more mystifying as to why animation 
production didn’t quite progress in the same momentum.

Part of my project seeks to find answers to this by looking at the 
historical climate of the country during this time. Animation production 
continued but it was taken up by State run organizations and agencies as 
opposed to commercial cinema studios. Are we to then surmise that the 
direction that animation took from the 1940s is attributable to the 
larger task of nation building? The early traces of these survive in 
films such as “the war that never ends” a film directed by the wife of a 
certain captain Johnson who ran the old Army Cartoon Unit. Cartoons 
having lent themselves easily to mass communication have often found 
themselves the carriers of social messages – in this case the war 
against disease. If we were to take a cross section of Indians and ask 
them for one example they can think of for Indian animation – we would 
find that even now the ‘Ek Titli, Anek Titliyan’ song and film resounds 
in every one (those that is, that were around in the seventies and 
eighties and who would, no doubt add the ubiquitous slogan of ‘hum do, 
hamare do’ as a refrain). Looking closely, we find that animation in the 
years after independence was channelised into a certain kid of state run 
apparatus. The Cartoon Film Unit of The Films Division was set up in 
1948. The Films Division was the official film production apparatus of 
the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. The Indo-US Technical Aid 
Programme of 1951 brought veteran Disney animator Claire weeks to India 
to train and create animation programmes. The Industrial Policy 
Resolution of 1953 led the Government of India to invite renowned 
designers Charles and Ray Eames. On the basis of their ‘The India 
Report', the National Institute of Design was set up in 1961. All these 
initiatives and more such as the Doordarshan supported and produced 
animation.
I will attempt to trace how these developments changed the course of 
animation history in the country. How from a vibrant medium full of 
possibilities it became the more staid handmaiden of social awakening. 
How the movement and growth of animation film design became embroiled in 
the larger canvas of the developmental ideal. How from artistic 
possibilities the shift was made towards a pragmatic truth. And of 
course how the last decade or so has seen the first public stirrings of 
the animated film in India. And how even this reflects in a sense the 
changing climate of our country. And how somewhere in this shaky 
trajectory of the animated film lies the faint shadow of the growth and 
development of a country.

----------------
Sukanya Ghosh
Calcutta