Discover historical insights, lesser-known facts, and incredible photography of iconic movies including Mother India, Mughal-e-Azam, Sholay, and Bajirao Mastani with this gorgeous celebration of the world's biggest film industry. Bollywood charts the world of Hindi cinema year-by-year from the pioneering studios of the 1930s, through the Golden Age, to the age of Big Money in the 21st century and it's biggest modern stars. With over 1,000 films produced every year, the glitter and charm of Bollywood is unrivalled anywhere else in the world. Bollywood takes you on a behind-the-scenes tour of Hindi cinema's biggest blockbusters, with stunning film stills and plot timelines, as well as insightful biographies of iconic stars including Dev Anand, Amitabh Bachchan, Deepika Padukone, and Shahrukh Khan. Bring the spectacle home and be enchanted by the glamour and colour of Indian cinema with this glittering homage to Bollywood!
Indian Film Stars offers original insights and important reappraisals of film stardom in India from the early talkie era of the 1930s to the contemporary period of global blockbusters. The collection represents a substantial intervention to our understanding of the development of film star cultures in India during the 20th and 21st centuries. The contributors seek to inspire and inform further inquiries into the histories of film stardom-the industrial construction and promotion of star personalities, the actual labouring and imagined lifestyles of professional stars, the stars' relationship to specific aesthetic cinematic conventions (such as frontality and song-dance) and production technologies (such as the play-back system and post-synchronization), and audiences' investment in and devotion to specific star bodies-across the country's multiple centres of film production and across the overlapping (and increasingly international) zones of the films' distribution and reception. The star images, star bodies and star careers discussed are examined in relation to a wide range of issues, including the negotiation and contestation of tradition and modernity, the embodiment and articulation of both Indian and non-Indian values and vogues; the representation of gender and sexuality, of race and ethnicity, and of cosmopolitan mobility and transnational migration; innovations and conventions in performance style; the construction and transformation of public persona; the star's association with film studios and the mainstream media; the star's relationship with historical, political and cultural change and memory; and the star's meaning and value for specific (including marginalised) sectors of the audience.
A spectacular collection that celebrates Bollywood’s most enduring superstars Hindi cinema has wielded a hypnotic charm over viewers for close to a century, with its melodious music, colourful drama and lively plotlines. But at the heart of its mystique is the galaxy of stars who continue to mesmerize audiences. Bollywood’s Top 20 is a definitive collection of original essays, paying tribute to the biggest stars of all time—from Ashok Kumar, Dilip Kumar, Dev Anand, Raj Kapoor, Nargis and Madhubala to Rajesh Khanna, Amitabh Bachchan, Aamir Khan, Shah Rukh Khan, Kajol and Kareena Kapoor. Each piece offers unique insights into the struggles and triumphs, downfalls and scandals, and the inscrutable X factor of these talented actors that turned them into demigods and divas.
Here is the astonishing true story of Bollywood, a sweeping portrait about a country finding its identity, a movie industry that changed the face of India, and one man's struggle to become a star. Shah Rukh Khan's larger than life tale takes us through the colorful and idiosyncratic Bollywood movie industry, where fantastic dreams and outrageous obsessions share the spotlight with extortion, murder, and corruption. Shah Rukh Khan broke into this $1.5 billion business despite the fact that it has always been controlled by a handful of legendary film families and sometimes funded by black market money. As a Muslim in a Hindu majority nation, exulting in classic Indian cultural values, Shah Rukh Khan has come to embody the aspirations and contradictions of a complicated culture tumbling headlong into American style capitalism. His story is the mirror to view the greater Indian story and the underbelly of the culture of Bollywood. "A bounty for cinema lovers everywhere." --Mira Nair, Director, The Namesake and Monsoon Wedding "King of Bollywood is the all-singing, all-dancing back stage pass to Bollywood. Anupama Chopra chronicles the political and cultural story of India with finesse and insight, through fly-on-wall access to one of its biggest, most charming and charismatic stars." -- Gurinder Chadha, director of Bend it Like Beckham "The "Easy Rider Raging Bull" of the Bollywood industry and essential reading for any Shah Rukh Khan fan." --Emma Thompson, actress "Anu Chopra infuses the pivotal moments of Shah Rukh Khan's life with an edge-of-your-seat tension worthy of the best Bollywood blockbusters." --Kirkus
Global Bollywood brings together leading scholars to examine the transnational and transmedia terrain of Bollywood. Defining Bollywood as an arena of public culture distinct from Hindi-language Bombay cinema, this volume offers a new critical framework for analyzing the institutional, cultural, and political dimensions of Bollywood films and film music as they begin to constitute an important circuit of global flows in the twenty-first century.
In Bollywood, anthropologist and film scholar Tejaswini Ganti provides a guide to the cultural, social and political significance of Hindi cinema, outlining the history and structure of the Bombay film industry, and the development of popular Hindi filmmaking since the 1930s. Providing information and commentary on the key players in Bollywood, including composers, directors and stars, as well as material from current filmmakers themselves, the areas covered in Bollywood include: history of Indian cinema main themes and characteristics of Hindi cinema significant films, directors and stars production and distribution of Bollywood films interviews with actors, directors and screenwriters. Anyone interested in, or studying Bollywood cinema will find this a valuable purchase.
Time magazine named Bono and Bill and Melinda Gates their "Persons of the Year." The United Nations tapped Angelina Jolie as a goodwill ambassador. Bob Geldof organized the Live8 concert to push the G8 leaders' summit on AIDS and debt relief. What has come to be called "celebrity diplomacy" attracts wide media attention, significant money, and top official access around the world. But is this phenomenon just the latest fad? Are celebrities dabbling in an arena that is out of their depth, or are they bringing justified notice to important problems that might otherwise languish on the crowded international diplomatic scene? This book is the first to examine celebrity diplomacy as a serious global project with important implications, both positive and negative. Intended for readers who might not normally read about celebrities, it will also attract audiences often turned off by international affairs. Celebrities bring optimism and "buzz" to issues that seem deep and gloomy. Even if their lofty goals remain elusive, when celebrities speak, other actors in the global system listen.
Take the trip of a lifetime into the past and present of Bollywood Fascinated by the high energy, high emotion, high color, endless dance routines, and sheer scale of Bollywood—but afraid you'll never really know your Ghazals from your Qawwalis, or your Khans from your Kapoors? Well, in the immortal line from the Hindi-language blockbuster Sultan, "No one can defeat you unless you accept defeat yourself," and there's no need to be defeated at all when you can sit back with Bollywood For Dummies and immerse yourself in the glamorous whirl of one of the most exciting movie industries on Earth. Starting with the time-travel adventure of the book’s main feature—the history of the Hindi-speaking industry from people and events of early to mid 20th century Mumbai—you'll also journey in space, taking fascinating documentary side trips to get to know Tollywood’s Telegu-language cinema in southern India, as well as the growing influence of Lollywood across the border in Pakistan. Written by the cohosts of Desi Standard Time, a podcast that explores Bollywood and South Asian movies and media, you'll see how the unique cinema culture of Bollywood in particular has become a global phenomenon, reflecting the rise of India as an independent nation and presenting its long history—and it’s exciting and multifaceted present—in new, influential, and enduring forms. Whatever you paid the price of entry for: the popular Bollywood "Masala" movie style that emphasizes music, comedy, romance, and action; sensitive critiques of a fast-changing society by the Indian Social Realism movement; new forms of music from Indian disco to Sufi boogie; or a look at the lives and talents of the great acting dynasties—it's all here. And there'll still be plenty more plot twists beyond these to surprise and delight you. Get to know the people who built Bollywood Discover the main music and dance styles Explore and recognize Bollywood’s influence on Western cinema Go social and join up with the liveliest Bollywood fan communities You're right to be excited: for newbies a whole new world awaits, and for aficionados, there's always so much more to know. So, sit back with this book, grab some popcorn or a plate of samosas—or why not both—and prepare to begin an electric feast to sizzle all your senses.
This work provides an introduction to the enormously successful world of Bollywood - the biggest film industry on the planet. It includes a selection of writings by some of the most prominent voices in Indian film writing and criticism.
It's the 1980s and Hindi cinema is going through the bleakest phase in its fifty-year history. The old guard is coming unstuck at the box office with alarming regularity and the new generation has failed to take off. Rampant video piracy has resulted in middle-class audiences abandoning the theatres for the comfort of their drawing rooms. Film-makers are making films replete with violence and crudity addressed to front-benchers. And the less said about the quality of music the better. Then, out of the blue, an unheralded film, boasting no stars and helmed by a first-time film-maker burst on to the screens, bringing audiences back, resurrecting Hindi cinema and its music, while giving it two of its most enduring stars. That film was Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak. Gautam Chintamani goes behind the scenes to record how QSQT (as it has come to be known) made the choices it did, brought the love story back into reckoning, revived Hindi film music and revitalized Hindi cinema. His in-depth interviews with people associated with the film - director Mansoor Khan, stars Aamir Khan and Juhi Chawla, cinematographer Kiran Deohans and music composers Anand-Milind, among others - make Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak: The Film That Revived Hindi Cinema a comprehensive study of a trendsetter that provided Hindi cinema a new direction. It is, equally, an intimate, fun-filled account of a beloved classic.
