Propaganda Movies Archives - Lokmarg

‘Propaganda Movies Distort Facts Selectively to Suit a False Narrative’

By LokMarg 25th July 2023

Kavindraa Sinha, a screenplay writer, editor, and an ad-film director in Mumbai, delves into the history of propaganda movies that began with World War 1 to serve the arms industry. His views:

Being a cinema student and movie professional, I believe that ‘propagandist cinema’ always has well-defined political motives or some hidden agenda that serve the stakeholders who are making such movies, because movies affect the audience emotionally. The audience is potentially vulnerable and people may tend to believe in what they watch in the movies.

In terms of decoding the genre of propaganda cinema, since the beginning of the cinema journey till today, this genre has not been very popular among the filmmakers’ tribe across the world. And, yet, we see propaganda movies being made in all era and times.

In the past, filmmakers used this genre as a cinematic tool for the war industry. This can be very clearly observed during World War 1 and 2. However, its brutal use could first be seen during the Nazi regime of Adolf Hitler in Germany, especially during the late1920s, and the beginning of the 1940s.

Through these films, the filmmakers build a particular psyche, so as to comprehend the reality of the Nazi party in a glorified, superlative way, while the portrayal of Jews is done in an extremely dehumanizing manner. Hence, similar movies were made revolving around the themes of racism, anti-Semitism, while glorifying war and militarism. Surprisingly, some of these filmmakers also made mainstream, entertainment movies that could divert the audience’s attention from the ongoing world war.

ALSO READ: Kashmir To Kerala – The Propaganda Potpourri

You can watch many documentaries or feature films made in Germany from 1933 to 1945 which reflect this genre. Some of these movies are: Kolberg, Jud Suss, and Triumph of the Will. All these movies had a clear-cut political agenda, and this could be easily derived.

Post-1945, and during the Cold War, we have seen propaganda movies in American cinema that portrayed communism in the Soviet Union and East Europe in a very bad light, showing it as dangerous to society. You can watch such movies like Guilty of Treason, The Red Danube, The Whip Hand, among others.

Over time, the political agenda in this genre shifted to other subjects with the prime objective to create some kind of unknown fear among the people, and place the entire humanity in a state of insecurity about ‘tomorrow’. Themes of such movies are predictably — aliens, economy collapse, pandemics, etc. On the contrary, such movies are sometimes very popular and do well in the box-office. Filmmakers, who make such movies, become rich.

Hence, in simplistic terms, the propaganda genre is a cinematic tool which has the subtle purpose to exaggerate lies in such a way that all they depict looks believable and real, and, it subliminally works on the psyche of the audience so as to form or build an opinion. This is the entire objective of the filmmakers who support certain political or hidden agenda of the stakeholders, and, who want their ‘lies’ to be legitimized and endorsed as the total and final truth.

The propaganda genre used by filmmakers in the movies has a longer effect on the audience’s minds. Our audience may appear to be naive and emotional, but they are also super-smart and intelligent. In the age of social media and AI, the audience, instantly, verifies the facts shown in the movies.

From the aesthetic perspective of cinema, there is nothing substantial that is being contributed to artistic expression through this form of cinematic genre. The story-telling is based on false facts and distortion of the truth, making such films extremely shallow, neither falling in the realm of fiction or fantasy, nor reflecting any kind of real or true cinema. Since cinema is an art form, thereby, in the propaganda genre, you have lots of visual ingredients that you can analyze in the aesthetic purview. You may even enjoy such cinema, visually, sometimes.

The narrator also conducts cinematic workshops and teaches film appreciation

As told to Amit Sengupta

‘The Kerala Story Seeks To Alienate, Demonise A Community’

By LokMarg 18th May 2023

Asha Achy Joseph, a filmmaker and academic, says the movie is problematic as it projects the core elements of a religion through the lens of extremism. Her views:

About The Kerala Story, at the outset one could say that the film’s text concerns the narrative of a Hindu girl who happens to love a Muslim boy and is cheated by him for an ulterior motive. The story unfolds to the audience as first-person narrative of the young woman after she is captured as a militant from an international border somewhere around Afghanistan. The film revolves around the factual evidence of ISIS converting young people to be used for their religious and political goals. The narration works generally through flashbacks.

In the subtext, we realise that the filmmaker’s focus is not on the love story, nor on the militant’s story — but on something else! We feel the filmmaker is not sure if he wants us to know the complete story. The lack of professionalism in genuinely engaging with the content is obvious. The audience is forced to look upon the core elements of a religion through the lens of religious extremism. They are then coerced into believing that any number of such cases can occur, is occurring, and it is all under cover. Clearly, fear is being induced, calling it “real incident”.

It is funny to see how this kind of film-making is taking the support of non-fiction to mislead the audience with the rhetoric of real-life story. This is a clear case of a below average text, thoroughly under-researched and lacking in details, with a subtext that has the clear agenda of religious and political polarisation.

This film intends to grab attention through extreme stereotypes and cliché from a national audience which is familiar with Bollywood entertainment guidelines. If the content had been made in Malayalam, it would have flopped on the first day, first show in the state. In Kerala, we make more than 200 films per year and the audience has good taste in choosing content. Also, a sizable population is inclined towards analysing films within the framework of international standards, and is tuned in with the regular film festival culture.

In Kerala, the general tendency has been to ignore the film. I watched the film on the first day; mostly, there were Hindi-speaking cosmopolitan audience, or workers from Hindi-speaking states. The theatre hall with around 200 seats was not full. Outside the theatre, there was police protection and I could see a couple of posters put up by protestors against the film.

ALSO READ: ‘The Kerala Story Weaponises The Conversion Issue’

Discussion on this film brings us to a typical post-truth scenario. A filmmaker is misrepresenting an event in recent history, claiming that a large number of people are affected in this region, and projecting his film/oneself as the saviour. He is using the ‘reality element’ to twist truth and we know that is what is called propaganda!

Polarisation can happen through positive or negative description of a phenomenon. In this film, in the guise of sounding a genuine alarm against the gruesome acts of extremist groups, the filmmaker is conveniently ‘othering’ communities. Here it is done through the alienation of other religions from the majority religion and we know that this is the political goal of Hindutva. By alienating a large number of people from ‘other’ religions, the propagandists are envisioning a political climate of intolerance.

I would say the filmmaker is lucky to have chosen Kerala as the geographical area of this story. I am not sure if it were a story placed in any other state, could he have avoided inducing physical violence within the communities around? Through the release and run of this film without any violent incidents in Kerala, the country must take note that we have secured a democratic space for dialogue and debate, irrespective of the topic.

A last word about the perception of the filmmakers about women in Kerala: We are women who have shown exceptional models to the country; be it local self-government or micro- finance management or health-care or education. By no means of fiction, can the rest of the country undervalue us. The young women shown in this film does not do justice to the dignity of our young women as empowered citizens. We may be falling in or out of love, but that does not give anyone the license to portray us anyhow, according to their perceptions, or whims and fancies!

The narrator is the Dean of School of Communication at the Sacred Heart College in Kochi, Kerala. She is a state and national awardee in film-making and television content production

Kashmir To Kerala, The Propaganda Potpourri

By Mahendra Ved 18th May 2023

It must be stressed at the outset that no film, once cleared by the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC), should be banned or prevented from being shown to the public. No individual or group – political, social or religious – should be allowed to act as an extra-constitutional authority.

On the ongoing controversies, it needs to be noted that no Kashmiri will make The Kashmir Files and no Malayali will make The Kerala Story. Kerala, especially, has a record of good cinema. Filmmakers from Kashmir know their state well and also know the damage a misleading picture can cause.

The focus is on Muslims – men in The Kashmir Files and women in The Kerala Story. The likely content of The Bengal Files, supposedly in the making, can be guessed from the West Bengal Chief Minister’s claim. Her state has a significant Muslim population and borders a Muslim-majority Bangladesh.

The ‘honour’ for the two films goes to Bollywood. Although a pejorative, the popular name for Mumbai-based cinema, to the exclusion of a dozen other film-making centres, it has legitimate claims of a global reach. This underscores the global damage bad cinema can cause and is evidently already causing. Britain has stopped The Kerala Story showing.

To carry out these ‘jobs’, however creative and lucrative, marks deterioration for Bollywood which has a record, without a formal political label, of promoting secular values. It has creative people from all communities. It gave the world My Name is Khan… when the West was witnessing aggressive promotion of Islamophobia post-9/11.

The fact is that Bollywood’s leading lights are anxious to stay on the right side of the political divide. After a century-plus of being the entertainment hub, Bollywood, or its influential sections, are no longer afraid of taking sides. The motivation, besides money which is okay, is political.

Films have caused controversies, even violent protests – some even when they were under production – in the past as well. The recent ones are part of the political and social churning and have contributed to the widening schism. But that, again, is no reason to ban a duly certified film.

Films are powerful tools that shape ideas, attitudes and social norms. They have a greater ability to sway opinions and spread ideas compared to other media forms. As such, the sudden slew of political films and biopics, and the timing of their release have raised questions about politicians capitalising on the power of Bollywood and Indian cinema in general for political mileage.

Cinema and politics have often intertwined in India. Several actors have turned to politics post their film careers while Indian movies have also tackled social and political concerns in plotlines, albeit implicitly and allegorically.

ALSO READ: ‘We Must Counter Propaganda Films, Not Ban It’

The present spree is in time for the national elections a year away, interspersed by many assembly polls. Its justification can well be that when other arms of the media are profiting from participation, why single out the cinema? And of this medium, the over-the-top (OTT) platforms, where content is not subject to censorship, have yet to join the electoral bandwagon. If and when they do, it will be really no-holds-barred.

The picture is not very different from 2019 except that it is more strident. An in-your-face biopic on Shiv Sena supremo Balasaheb Thackeray, a derisive film on former premier Manmohan Singh and a highly laudatory one on the present incumbent, Narendra Modi were released. Potshots taken against Singh stood in contrast with the forceful hagiography of Modi. The release of the Modi biopic was so close to the polls that the Election Commission had to force a delay.

But these films would seem benign today when compared to the current crop, with more in the offing. The difference in the approach needs to be noted. The film fare of 2019 had the government of the day, while remote-controlling, seeking to appear neutral. It left all action to the party leaders and cadres. But the ‘files’ on Kashmir and Kerala have enjoyed direct, in-your-face, endorsement from the top-most political authority, especially during the recent Karnataka elections. That the voter rejected divisive discourse is a different, if reassuring, story. Unless there is an attempt at course correction, this is more likely to persist over the next year.

The partisanship has penetrated and widened this time. The maker of The Kashmir Files, who continues to court controversy long after the film’s release and the diplomatic fracas it caused when shown at the country’s most prestigious international film festival, is a member of the CBFC. If he participated in the certification process of his own work is beside the point. The real issue is that the authority that appointed him retains him in that post through the controversy and after.

As for The Kerala Story, the official and political endorsement has come amidst almost universal criticism of its content and treatment and brazen juggling of figures – from 32,000 women being affected to just three and then the film’s producer argues that the numbers do not matter.

The Kerala Story was banned in West Bengal but the filmmakers secured a stay on the ban from the Supreme Court. The apex court, quite appropriately in principle, but ignoring the political overtones, asked why the film is banned. Whatever the contents’ quality, the two films have been projected as box office hits. Meanwhile, some BJP-ruled states have declared The Kerala Story tax-free.

Film certification has been a central subject, a carry-over from the colonial era. It can be argued that this is untenable in a quasi-federal polity where many provinces, particularly in peninsular India, have cinemas that reflect their distinctive culture. But given the divisiveness that already exists, one hesitates to add to the list of issues ranging from language, land borders to river waters.

Like much else on the agenda of various political parties, the debate is about the extent to which cinema can influence the minds of the viewers as potential voters. Indeed, the minds that work in the darkness of the cinema theatre (or the cosiness of home) and the exclusively covered polling booth where the vote is cast are the ultimate battlegrounds.

While it is true that propaganda is no longer a candidly top-down process with the proliferation of social media, the experience of the last century shows that films that are undisguised and naked political propaganda are not able to influence people. People may watch them but they see through the design and reject their crudity in its entirety. We will know where the Indian viewer/voter stands next summer.

The writer can be contacted at mahendraved07@gmail.com

Who Will Risk A ‘Mughal-e-Azam’ Today?

By Mahendra Ved 15th July 2022

It is finally curtains for Mughal-e-Azam, 62 years after it released on August 5, 1960. Dilip Kumar, who played the rebel prince Salim, died a year ago, at 98. Shapurji Palonji Mistry, who financed the film at great risk, passed away this month at 93. There is none who can talk, first-hand, about what all went into its making. Others who contributed to this film, rated as one of the greatest, if not India’s greatest-ever, left long ago.

Mughal-e-Azam has slipped into the realm of nostalgia, as part of India’s rich, century-plus, film culture. But there will always be critics and cineastes who enjoy cinema of a by-gone era. Anyone would agree that another Mughal-e-Azam cannot be made, just as you cannot re-make Cleopatra or Ten Commandments. Technology is available, but finances?

Over 80,000 feet of film footage had accumulated by the time it was completed, enough, it is said, to make four more Mughal-e-Azams. Even the current crop of the Mistry clan, though richer than it then was, would shudder at the risks involved in its re-making. And there is logic, not just nostalgia, which counsels against tinkering with classics.

Above all, where does one get a director like K Asif, nursing an unparalleled passion for the project for long years and at the end, delivering a masterpiece that generations have watched with awe?

Rare for a movie, Mughal-e-Azam is now a metaphor for those times. Six decades is a long time. The passage has changed values; more so in the recent times, sharply and divisively. It was part of the Idea of India as one has known.

That idea is being challenged now. Agreed, it is not all fact/document-based. There is history, and there is popular lore that has devolved over time. Essentially separate, but when they get enmeshed, and ideological agenda is tagged, confusion has arisen and disputes have occurred.

This is being re-written from the contemporary prism. While more information and research should be welcome, what we are witnessing are attempts to turn it into version of the victor – mind you, victory not of a king of a queen, but an electoral one in a democracy, subject to renewal every five years. Meant to suite a political agenda, it is being changed from the top, to percolate down, in the name of ‘nationalism’.

Cinema that remains India’s most popular and pervasive medium, is being co-opted in this. This is reflected in some recent films on subjects that deal with the past. They are not necessarily based on history. Even loud disclaimers that they are only ‘inspired’ or based on literature on those personalities, events and those times, have not prevented controversies, some of them turning violent.

“Hurt feelings” and “wounded pride” have been advanced among the reasons for protests. We have seen politics-laced controversies by people of one caste or community or the other.

Sanjay Leela Bhansali has been among the worst ‘offenders’ or ‘victims’, depending upon how one views his films. His Padmavat (2018) angered some Rajput groups. Bajirao Mastani (2015) dissatisfied some claimants of Maratha Empire’s glory. They felt Bajirao’s wife Kashibai was short-changed to glamourize Mastani. Shah Rukh Khan-starrer Devdas (2002) hurt Sharatchandra acolytes who found the England-returned protagonist outlandish.

ALSO READ: Pakeezah – The Courtesan Classic

Bhansali grew wiser by the time he made Gangubai Kathiawadi (2022). Nobody really wanted to own up a red light district’s ‘madam’. By comparison, Ashutosh Gowarikar has been lucky to escape controversy, though unlucky with his films’ success. Critics didn’t delve deep enough into the ancient Mohenjo Daro (2016). None was ‘hurt’ by his more recent Panipat (the 3^rd battle, in 1761). That battle altered the course of history to a great extent, if not as much as the Battle of Plassey (1757). Afghanistan’s Ahmed Shah Durrani dealing a humiliating defeat on the Peshwa’s Martha army went unchallenged.

Samrat Prithviraj (2022) is, perhaps, a better ‘representative’ of the changed times. Claimed to be based on Prithviraj Raso composed in praise of the king by his favourite bard Chand Bardai, it has satisfied those who had pitched for ‘purity’ in the depiction of Rani Padmini or Padmavati. But it left the film audiences cold.

This could have been box office failure of a big-budget venture, except that its director, Chandra Prakash Dwivedi, injected controversy. The man who had made that brilliant serial, Chanakya, for Doordarshan long ago, found a political alibi for his financial flop. He reportedly blamed it on the theme being about “a Hindu king”.

This brings us back to Mughal-e-Azam, but not without touching upon Gowarikar’s immensely successful Jodhaa Akbar (2008). The most remarkable thing about that film is that it put a seal of confirmation on the message of Mughal-e-Azam. Mind you, based on available records and popular lore, neither claimed perfection in historical terms.

Both celebrated the story of Jalaluddin Mohammed Akbar (1556-1605 AD) the third Mughal Emperor and his Hindu Queen Jodhabai. Both films stressed on mutual respect and tolerance among the Muslim rulers and their Hindu subjects.

British academic, Professor Rachel Dwyer, author of the book Filming the Gods: Religion and Indian Cinema, says Mughal-e-Azam highlighted religious tolerance between Hindus and Muslims. Her examples include scenes depicting the presence of Queen Jodhabai, a woman and a Hindu, in Akbar’s court. Celebrating Janmashtami, Akbar is shown pulling a string to rock a swing with Krishna’s idol. Anarkali, the courtesan Salim loves and to get whom he rebels against the father, sings a Hindu devotional song.

It wasn’t ‘secularism’ as we know it today. Akbar’s move was political, driven by enlightenment and not by altruism. History calls him ‘Great’ because rather than fight the Rajputs, he had consciously struck alliances with them.

Akbar is not-so-great and Mughals are the villains today. Social media, some of it owned by major media houses, is full of calumny against them. Historical accounts of Akbar’s defeating Mewar’s Maharana Pratap in the Battle of Haldighati (1576) are being disputed. Already, some history books declare Pratap the victor.

Again, it was a significant military effort by Akbar to establish his rule across India’s North. The Haldighati battle is a case-study at the Indian Army’s College of Warfare. If Akbar had Hindu generals, Pratap had Muslims. Now, it is viewed as a clash of communities.

This type of jingoism begets extreme reaction, equally guilty of distortion. Akbar is called a ‘fake’ Muslim who blocked his son from marrying Anarkali, a Muslim, but allowed idolatry by Hindu wife Jodhabai.

Agreed, that those who control the present can rewrite the past. But as George Orwell says: “The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.”

The writer can be reached at mahendraved07@gmail.com