Above all, the Nagal relied on his imagination a great deal, to improvise according to the audience’s feedback and add to the original tales that he was reciting. He would also acquire inspiration from the images and pictures fixed on the walls – pictures of religious leaders, sport heroes, epic characters – and appropriate them into his narrative. The dominant themes in Nagali were epics depicted from Shah name [2] or the story of Alexander’s quest for the elixir of life.
The international success of cinema over the past decades may have veiled the fact that filmmakers work under extremely harsh circumstances rarely seen in other national cinemas. Filmmaking is subject to tight government controls and strict censorship codes ranging from banning any criticism of the regime to highly restrictive codes on representation of women and their interactions with men. The imposed codes have undermined the creativity of the filmmakers and their ability to tackle pressing social issues.
