ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the possible starting points of Bangladesh film history from various streams of Bengali Muslim identity and cultural modernity as well as from different approaches to writing film histories, such as production history, exhibition history and institutional history. It intention is to interrogate why and how a specific event in Bangladesh cinema history has been taken for granted and repeatedly used as the beginning of this national cinema by Bangladeshi film historians. However, if we consider cinema history not only as film-production history, but rather as the history of film exhibition too, we instantly find some other options for identifying the history of Bangladesh national cinema. For example, below chapter presents case studies on the early period of film exhibition in East Bengal, any of which can be considered as the 'beginning' of cinema in Bangladesh from a film-exhibition history approach. The chapter asks-considering cinema as a social institution-how one could begin a history of Bangladesh national cinema.
