1.  See details in van Schendel; Lewis; and Riaz. [return to page 1]

2. See Harisur Rahman for more details.

3. Previously tax was calculated based on each ticket sold. With the new system, the cinema halls were charged a pre-fixed amount based on their capacity and other facilities. It meant the exhibitors now would pay the same amount of tax even if they had successive houseful shows. This eventually made the exhibition business more lucrative, and with the lion share of the profit, they became more dominant within the tripartite producer-distributor-exhibitor system of the Dhaka film industry.

4. For example, the number of cinema halls in Bangladesh rose from 767 in 1990 to 1175 in 2000, whereas the number of film productions rose from an average of 67 films during 1984-1992 to 80-100 films during the late 1990s to early 2000s (Raju 87-90).

5. This, Raju thinks, ultimately caused the rise of an ‘extreme-action genre’ film in the 1990s (Raju 92). ‘High doses of sex and violence together with romance’, ‘vulgar song and dance sequences’, ‘violent fight sequences’, and inclusion of cutpieces (sexually explicit scenes) are considered some of the key characteristics of such films.

6. It seems there were demands among the masses for such sexually explicit content, but subscribing to the conservative middle-class values regarding sexuality, the state preferred repressive measures, denying the masses the right to choose their preferred content. [Return to page 2]

7. For example, developing a rating system and ensuring its implementation, instead of banning or conditional certifications (i.e., certification on the condition of bringing recommended changes in the submitted film).

8. However, Hoek also shows that things are more layered at the ground level and the state censorship is contested in various ways by the local producers, distributors, exhibitors, and audiences.

9. One may also add that Bangladesh has been under such civilian and military autocracy since 1975 (van Schendel 227)

10. The parliamentary democracy since 1991 under elected political parties has been called ‘illiberal’ because under the structure of a ‘patron state’, politicians seem not to be accountable to the masses; rather, it is their client-groups whom they try to satisfy by distributing various state benefits among them. Thus, political power has remained a way to access national resources and then, to distribute it among the supporting networks (Lewis)

11. He seems to be an archetype of the narrator or vivek (conscience) character in a traditional folk theater of Bengal (Jatra), who throughout the performance verbally explains to the audience what is happening and what is right and wrong. [Return to page 3]

12. It may also remind us how in such popular understandings killing and terrorism/crime are differentiated where one may become a killer and remain innocent when it is done for the sake of survival or as a legitimate protest in a harsh world, whereas killing becomes an act of crime or terrorism only when it is done for personal material gains (see Hoek 2013 for a relevant discussion).

13. Humayun Faridi, the actor who performed in the role of Jafar, often played villain characters in commercial Bangladeshi films and he is well renowned for his acting skills.

14. Harisur Rahma has studied the film consumption habits of the urban, middle class in Bangladesh and claimed that, increasingly with India’s access to geo-satellite power in the early 1990s, the rise of cable TV in Bangladesh has alienated the urban middle class from local cinemas which ultimately resulted in a ‘ghettoization’ of the local films. Local FDC films became films for people of lower economic status, mostly working-class people living in rural and urban periphery. He too agrees with Raju that the film industry responded to the changing situation with changes in its narrative content which resulted in the claimed ‘ghettoization’.

15. Earlier traces of such scholarship on Bangladeshi popular films can be found in Mazhar’s reading of the film Beder Meye Josna and also to some extent in the works of Awwal, and Chowdhury.