<p class="p1" style="margin-bottom: 0px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; color: rgb(69, 69, 69);">In our cultural life films have played a significant role over the last century. I am not a serious student of the cinema, so I will begin with my own personal experience over the decades. I recall seeing the earlier mythological films-Ram Rajya, Bharat Milap and Shakuntala-in the early 194Os. Since then many significant and memorable films have been made. Do Bigha Zameen, with Balraj Sahni and Nirupama Roy, was a major statement against the cruel exploitation of poor farmers by ruthless capitalists. Then there was a genre of patriotic films by Manoj Kumar and others; then again there were human interest stories such as Bandini, Pyaasa and Dosti. Again, we come to a historical masterpiece like Mughal-e-Azam with steller performances by Prithviraj Kapoor, Dilip Kumar and Madhubala. With changing socio-economic conditions, the content of our cinema has also changed and an alternate cinema emerged in 1970, to be followed by ^New Cinema^.</p><p class="p1" style="margin-bottom: 0px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; color: rgb(69, 69, 69);"><br></p><p class="p1" style="margin-bottom: 0px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; color: rgb(69, 69, 69);"><br></p><p class="p1" style="margin-bottom: 0px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; color: rgb(69, 69, 69);"><br></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; line-height: normal; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><strong><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: "Google Sans", sans-serif;">About the Author<o:p></o:p></span></strong></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; line-height: normal; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><strong><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: "Google Sans", sans-serif;">Author details will be added soon...<o:p></o:p></span></strong></p>