Abstract:
Colonization has brought about effects that have had lasting impacts on all colonized
spaces, may they be geographical, economic or cultural. In this paper my attempt is to
explore how post independent cinema of Richard Attenborough tries to portray anticolonialist
heroes in terms of western cinematographic tools, which his prospective
audiences of the west were familiar with. These apparently contradictory entities, i.e.
native protects and its leaders redressed to the taste of the very populace once they
struggled against in a desperate attempts to reclaim their independence, are marked by
a mockery of independence itself. At a superficial level, this become almost evidence in
the selection of the main actor of both films, British Ben Kingsly (as Gandhi) and
American Denzil Washington (as Steve Biko) in Gandhi and in Cry Freedam
respectively. What these western actors dressed in the native cloths, how ever
successful they were in their performance, seem to be authenticating by revisiting
colonial space, is in fact a reversed form of colonialism that appropriate the ex-rival into
the colonial realm itself. In exploration of such thesis, I will seek theoretical support in
critical theory in general and post colonial theory of representation and theory of film in
particular.
