The stories one associates with the Malayalam film industry these days are joyous — of it making yet another movie that defies conventional box office logic, of it telling a familiar story in unexpected ways, or of it conquering some uncharted territory. But almost a century ago, its beginnings were steeped in tragedy. J.C. Daniel, who became Malayalam cinema’s first filmmaker with Vigathakumaran (1930), never made another film. P.K. Rosy, the first Malayali heroine, had to flee the State after facing attacks from upper-caste men who couldn’t stand a Dalit woman playing an upper-caste character. Her face was never seen on screen again.
Cinema might have seemed a doomed enterprise back then in these parts — in the yet-to-be-formed Kerala, divided between princely states and the British Raj. The people of this land, fettered by feudal, casteist, and royal oppression, took their own sweet time warming up to one of the youngest art forms. Renaissance movements were only beginning to bring about progressive changes, while the socio-cultural-political churn birthed by Communism was still years away.
