ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates how cinema as a social institution functions in a post-colonial society, namely Bangladesh. It attempts to rethink the history of Bangladesh cinema in a new frame and it is the first step towards such rewriting. The reframing that proposes here lays the foundation for an interpretive history of Bangladesh cinema that emphasizes change over continuity. The kind of history of Bangladesh cinema chapter propose here attempts to combine theoretical and empirical methodologies that are usually utilized quite separately in Film Studies. It tries to look at the cinema of Bangladesh in its entirety, from the production to the reception of films and their relationships and interactions with other social institutions and discourses. In order to situate Bangladeshi film-historiography within the international practices of cinema histories, chapter then review the major ways of producing film-historiography in the West-looking at practices both for 'Western' and non-Western/Asian national cinema.
