The term "parallel cinema" was coined more or less by accident. Inherent in the definition, however, was a subconscious process of elimination. The cinema of which one spoke was not "non-commercial" in intent, and no producer would tempt fate by branding it as such. Nor was it "art cinema", a classification designed to drive away an Indian public as surely as an unsigned Picasso would! Nor again, was it backed by an intellectual movement that could have given it the direction of a "
nouvelle vague". It was by and large a-cinema that sought to deviate from the usual melodrama by attempting an alternative treatment of commercially viable themes.
