Television (2012 film)

The film’s central conflict begins when television enters a village governed by an influential patriarch. The new appliance is treated not merely as entertainment but as a channel through which outside values, commercial imagery, music, and political ideas may enter the community. The patriarch’s opposition reflects an attempt to preserve social discipline by controlling what villagers can see. Farooki places this struggle in an everyday rural environment rather than presenting modernity as an abstract force. The result is a comedy-drama about spectatorship: people who have previously received news and stories through local authority suddenly gain access to distant places and competing narratives.¹

The film’s title is therefore deliberately literal and symbolic. Television becomes a household object, a source of pleasure, and a rival institution capable of redistributing knowledge and influence.

Television belongs to the internationally visible phase of Mostofa Sarwar Farooki’s career. Farooki, associated with Bangladesh’s alternative and independent film movement, combines social observation with popular comic situations rather than separating art cinema from accessible storytelling. The film received its international premiere at the 2012 Busan International Film Festival, a major Asian festival whose programs have helped introduce Bangladeshi cinema to audiences beyond South Asia.¹

Its festival circulation placed a specifically Bangladeshi debate—how communities negotiate new media and changing authority—within a broader international conversation about globalization. The ensemble cast, including Chanchal Chowdhury, Nusrat Imrose Tisha, and Mosharraf Karim, helped anchor the allegory in recognizable domestic relationships rather than in purely political symbolism.¹

Television treats technological change as a struggle over control rather than as simple progress. The film contrasts older forms of authority with the unpredictable circulation of broadcast images. Religious and moral objections to television coexist with curiosity, romantic desire, comic opportunism, and the wish to participate in a wider world. This mixture prevents the film from reducing conservative characters to caricatures or modern media to an uncomplicated good.

Farooki’s tonal strategy is equally significant. Satire makes ideological conflict visible through embarrassment, misunderstanding, and family friction, while the rural setting gives the arguments a material dimension: who owns the set, who decides when it may be watched, and who controls access to electricity and information. In this sense, the film connects media technology to class, gender, generational power, and local leadership.

The film’s overlooked subject is the politics of access. Television does not reach every villager equally: ownership, household hierarchy, literacy, mobility, and social reputation shape who can watch and how viewing is interpreted. The arrival of broadcast media also creates an unusual tension between collective spectatorship and private control, since a single set can become a communal gathering point while remaining the property of one family.

Another distinctive feature is the film’s position between national cinema and festival cinema. It is grounded in Bengali speech, village institutions, and local religious debate, yet its conflict is legible across cultures because television functions as a recognizable symbol of globalization. The film was also selected as Bangladesh’s submission for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, although it did not receive a nomination.⁴ This combination of local specificity and transnational circulation is central to its cultural significance.

Mostofa Sarwar Farooki

Bangladeshi filmmaker known for socially observant films that combine popular forms with modernist and independent-cinema influences.

Satellite television

Television broadcasting distributed by communications satellites, often providing channels and images originating outside the immediate local community.

Bangladeshi cinema

Film production associated with Bangladesh, principally in Bengali and shaped by the country’s literary, theatrical, musical, and social traditions.

Festival premiere

The first public presentation of a film within an organized film festival, often preceding wider theatrical or broadcast release.