It’s been more than 100 years since the Cinema entered in India but our hill states Himachal, Uttarakhand and Jammu & Kashmir are still very far from it. There are many reasons for this but the social and political thinkers blame the population and language as main barrier for the development of Cinema in these states. This is one of the reason why we have very few cinema halls in this region. But now many filmmakers have come forward to make films in our local languages/dialects. A few films have been produced in Pahari languages and people liked these films. But when it comes to the meaningful cinema, we are still very very far from that.
Currently the social media has fuelled the discussion on cinema in these states. People are using various name to denote the cinema in these hill states. These name s are Himollywood, hillywood, himwood, pahariwood, etc. But I have a strong opinion and urge that cinema in these hill states should be called Pahari Cinema. This is the word which actually do the justice to the cinema in these states. Like bollywood, hollywood or tollywood in south India, the cinema and hill states can’t be defined with any other ‘wood’. All these words connect the cinema of a specific language instead of region.
We have many different languages and dialects here in hill states which makes it difficult to call the cinema by a single language. Including the word ‘Wood’ is not possible as it will not do any justice to the Pahari Cinema. So instead of including the word ‘wood’ to any other word why don’t we call it Pahari Cinema. A word which can strengthen and develop the cinema in entire region instead of in any specific state.
The word ‘Wood’ which is being used to denote various film industries in the world today is inspired from the word Holly’wood’ known as English cinema. Many countries used this word with as an adition to their film industry names. And the race continued. India is one among those countries. But in India, we went much ahead of that and donoted all regional cinema with this word. Like Bollywood for Hindi, Pollywood for Punjabi, Tollywood for Bengali, Kollywood for Tamil, etc.
But if we look at the quality cinema in the world, they have not utilized this word and are using Cinema with the name of the country. For example Italian Cinema, Japanese Cinema, Chinese Cinema, Iranian Cinema, French Cinema, etc. Now as we are in the development of a new regional cinema in India, it’s our time to decide a name for the film industry in Himachal, Uttarakhand and J&K. So it depends upon us, the new filmmakers emerging in these Pahari States to create an identity of our regional cinema. It’s our responsibility to create a new civilization and carry forward our language and culture. We can use Himollywood, Himwood, Hillywood or any other name with the word ‘Wood’ or we can simply denote our cinema as Pahari Cinema to maintain the curtural and linguistic heritage of hills. I have share my perspective here now you can decide your perspective. Pahari Cinema or any other word with ‘Wood’?