OUTLOOK FOR CINEMA 12^ process through which the film-maker has arrived. The level of involvement is at the level of ideas and open to debate. Democratic does not mean the liberal bourgeois term of not taking sides (which in fact, they insidiously do), it means taking sides consciously-The area open to debate is whether the analysis or development is correct or not. The task before the artist is to use the real, the specific through all its nuances and arrive at a generalization which transcends the particular—a generalization that reveals society, its laws, its dynamics. In specific terms, one can see a commercial film only as an extension of the state and society that are in deep chaos and require the cinema to channelize pent-up emotions and despair. The^possib^lity of using the tools and elements of the commercial film can only be donejpytrarijfgnnni^.jl.hem and-.extendmg_them^ by revolutionizing what exists, and, thus, crcatmgjiewjorm^ that re^aTfKe"r^an5ws' o Four society and destgry the false ones. One tends to forget iTBasic rule that a certain kind of cinema exists because a certain kind of state exists. If one wants to change the nature of the state, one needs to change the nature of the cinemas But, rather than creating out of a vacuum, the new forms need to be based on what exists, cither in the cinema or other art forms. And this is the crisis. How does one create and not be trapped into the vortex the all encompassing embrace of the commercial film? Not be trapped into perpetuating the state or the status quo? The dramatic, narrative film has been found wanting. New forms need to be understood and analysed. Experiments with the epic, the dramatic analytic and the lyric have to be done; experiments with the agitprop cinema of the twenties, the documentary, the Cinema Verite of the sixties—all these forms need to be exten" ded and synthesized perhaps. And through this synthesis other forms will emerge. It is only when the artist realizes the long, drawn-out nature of his struggle that his work becomes mature, visionary and historical. The methods anAforms that he employs do not deal with the present only, but encompass the past as well as the future. The artist's work is not a convulsive burst but the bursts that occur after a great deal of the maturing process. His work reflects the growth. To that extent, art plays the role of time, changing time—time that shows people changing themselves and the world around them. In this lies the hope, when the artist creates a cinema that will be of value in shaping the cinema of today and provides a base for the cinema of the future. SAEED AKHTAR MIRZA.