Legal Cinematics: Frames Of Reality

Hashika Arora, Department of Law, University of Calcutta.

Vaidiki Das, NUJS,Kolkata

INTRODUCTION

Indian cinema was established hundred and eleven years ago and since then, it has been drastically developing especially in the last few decades we are at the inception of a new era where films include fiction, nonfiction, documentary, and other genres that are not only regarded as a medium of expression of thoughts and viewpoints but also acts as a tool to understand different practices including law.

There has been a direct correlation between these two socio-cultural aspects- law and cinema and they have been subject to various discussions. This paper shall focus on this emerging field, its limits, and its promising potential.

Indian cinema has been established in a manner where it influences the minds of the people especially the youth, where it breaks or makes new trends and most importantly builds stereotypes especially when it comes to scenes depicting justice, the lawyers, and courtroom trials.

Law is merely a term used in our everyday lives but it is far more complex and complicated to understand. Every interrelated practice is different -what family lawyers do is different from the role of a criminal lawyer, etc.3 This is where cinema comes into play, to put it simply law and cinema is a discourse that offers probable analysis of the social world we live in while pointing towards possible theories and social consciousness patterns along with other elements of the narratives. Cinema in today’s world represents the mass of the system and vice versa.