criticism and filmmaking, and then the particular crises that an alternate tradition of significant filmmaking faces today in fighting these conventions and ijl establishing fundamentally different links with its material/historical environment. Realism: Illusionism One of the inevitable consequences of the fact that most of the tangible polarities are today suggested by the market, has been the rise of a kind of film reviewing that has always verbalised these polarites in favour of the market. To take the very simple misconception held by many people that 'art' cinema is in some way antithetical to commerce, it is possible—if one were to chase these 'opposites' to their origins—to see (hat the fundamental idea of significant filmmaking is held to be that of mass-communication, with art, if at all anything, a sort of gratuitous elaboration of this mass-communication into culture-specificity, or the 'rooted5 and the 'folk5. The equating of the economic base of film production to its functions as mass-communication is not challenged by a single one of even the most vociferous 'political' filmmakers, not by our Utpalendu Chakrabortys nor our Govind Nihalanis. What these men will do, and make a radical stance out of it, is to change if anything certain cultural references; they give a political dimension to what already exists among our middle classes as a demand for a 'better5 cinema or within existing conditions a slightly more sophisticated product. Here the primary criterion seems to be how 'realistic' a film is. And we are now shifting track slightly, as indeed the apologists for 'realism' also do. So deeply ingrained into the minds of several of our reviewer-critics has got the concept of'realism' that it is necessary to see how this primacy of verisimilitude has replaced for them all other criteria. This must be seen to have a long history in capitalist art: the history of illusionism. As for illusionism in Western arl^ one can best refer the reader to Gulam mohammed Sheikh's fine exposition on the ideological assumption embedded within paintings that use the principle of the static viewer and^ vanishing-point perspective—see Mobile Vision (in this issue), Viewers View (Journal of Arts & Ideas, Number 3) and his essay on Rajput painting (Coomaraswamy centenary vol. ed. Sheikh et a/, to be published by Lalit Kala, New Delhi). It is obvious that photography succeeded in reinforcing many of the premises of earlier illusionism into a modern form. Photography, particularly its supposed objectivity in capturing the 'realist' situation, is Journal of Arts and Ideas 7