The inveterate intellectual cinephiles, especially the ones in Kolkata, may turn their noses up at the mention of Bollywood. But from 8 March to 20 April, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Los Angeles, US, is all set to hold a film festival to screen 12 Indian classics as part of a guest programme titled, ‘Emotion in Colour: A Kaleidoscope of Indian Cinema’.
The fare isn't all Bollywood masala, though. There is food for thought for the intellectual too as the menu includes some definitely out-of-the-box appetisers like the Manipuri classic Ishanou (1990) directed by Aribam Syam Sharma, one of the oldest living pioneers of Indian cinema and among the most venerated. Then there is Satyajit Ray’s iconic Kanchenjungha (1962).
The intellectual may, however, decide to ponder over the phrase 'iconic' and what it means for a film or a filmmaker to be labelled thus.
The adjective derives from the noun “icon," meaning someone or something that can be “regarded as a representative symbol or as worthy of veneration.”
Iconic filmmakers must thus have their names carved in stone in the history of Indian cinema. But is everything by and of an icon as equally iconic? Who decides the merit or degree of how iconic any given thing is, especially a subjective endeavour like film?
Let us try and extrapolate from the 'dirty dozen' we have on hand here.