50 Indian Film Classics
50 Indian Film Classics

Author: M K Raghavendra

Publisher: Harper Collins

Published: 2015-07-31

Total Pages: 360

ISBN-13: 9351360407

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An eclectic collection of essays by the winner of the National Award Swarna Kamal for Best Film Critic 1997 With more than a thousand films produced annually in over fifteen languages India is acknowledged as the largest producer of motion pictures in the world.50 Indian Film Classics provides detailed critical accounts of the most important Indian films beginning with Prem Sanyas (1925) to Rang De Basanti (2006) in languages ranging from Bengali and Hindi to Manipuri and Malayalam and representing a whole gamut of themes: from the 1930s mythological Sant Tukaram to the politically radical Calcutta '71, from art-house favourites like Uski Roti and Mukhamukham to blockbusters like Sholay and Lagaan. These perceptive essays introduce the reader to the many moods that inform Indian cinema, the austerity of Pather Panchali, the lavishness of Hum Aapke Hain Koun...!, the solemnity of Samskara and the fun and frolic of Amar Akbar Anthony.Illustrated with rare posters and stills this is an invaluable guide to the most significant cinema India has ever produced.

100 Essential Indian Films
100 Essential Indian Films

Author: Rohit K. Dasgupta

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2018-12-15

Total Pages: 283

ISBN-13: 1442277998

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Although the motion picture industry in India is one of the oldest and largest in the world—with literally thousands of productions released each year—films from that country have not been as well received as those from other countries. Known for their impressive musical numbers, melodramatic plots, and nationally beloved stars, Indian films have long been ignored by the West but are now at the forefront of cinema studies. With the prolific number of films available, it can be difficult to know what to watch. In 100 Essential Indian Films, Rohit K. Dasgupta and Sangeeta Datta identify and discuss significant works produced since the 1930s. Examining the output of different regional film industries throughout India, this volume offers a balance of box-office blockbusters, critical successes, and less-recognized cult classics. From early films by Satyajit Ray to contemporary classics such as Salaam Bombay and Lagaan, each entry includes comprehensive details about the film and situates the work in the context and history of the Indian canon.In addition to these notable productions, this book also examines key film directors and the work of major film stars in the industry. While many studies of Indian films focus on a single language’s contributions, this encyclopedia offers a comprehensive guide to productions from across the country in various languages, including Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, Malayalam, Assamese, Punjabi, Marathi, and English. 100 Essential Indian Films is an engaging volume that will appeal to both cinema scholars and those looking for an introduction to a vital component of world cinema.

50 Films That Changed Bollywood, 1995-2015
50 Films That Changed Bollywood, 1995-2015

Author: Shubhra Gupta

Publisher: Harper Collins

Published: 2016-12-10

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 9351778487

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Hindi cinema was trapped in formulaic cliches for decades: lost-and-found themes, sacrificing mothers, brothers on opposite sides of the law, villains lording over their dens, colourful molls, six songs, the use of rape as a plot pivot, and cops who always arrived too late. It hit an all-time low in the 1980s. Then, in 1991, came liberalization, and a wave of openness and aspiration swept across urban India. Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge was released in 1995 - and Hindi cinema became Bollywood. A new crop of film-makers began to challenge and break away from established rules. Over the next twenty years, a number of Hindi films consistently pushed the envelope in terms of content and technique to create a new kind of cinema. Among other innovations, film-makers came up with ways of crowd funding a film (Ankhon Dekhi), did away with songs if the narrative did not need them (Gangaajal), addressed different sexual preferences (My Brother ... Nikhil) and people with special needs (Black) like no one had ever done before. As film critic with the Indian Express, Shubhra Gupta has stayed the course these twenty years and more and experienced the transition first-hand. In 50 Films That Changed Bollywood, 1995-2015, she looks at the modern classics that have redefined Hindi cinema - from DDLJ and Rangeela to Satya and Dev D to Queen and Bajrangi Bhaijaan. Gupta offers a fascinating glimpse into how these films spoke to their viewers and how the viewers reacted to them - and, ultimately, how they changed us and how we changed them.

Routledge Handbook of Indian Cinemas
Routledge Handbook of Indian Cinemas

Author: K. Moti Gokulsing

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-04-17

Total Pages: 741

ISBN-13: 113677291X

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India is the largest film producing country in the world and its output has a global reach. After years of marginalisation by academics in the Western world, Indian cinemas have moved from the periphery to the centre of the world cinema in a comparatively short space of time. Bringing together contributions from leading scholars in the field, this Handbook looks at the complex reasons for this remarkable journey. Combining a historical and thematic approach, the Handbook discusses how Indian cinemas need to be understood in their historical unfolding as well as their complex relationships to social, economic, cultural, political, ideological, aesthetic, technical and institutional discourses. The thematic section provides an up-to-date critical narrative on diverse topics such as audience, censorship, film distribution, film industry, diaspora, sexuality, film music and nationalism. The Handbook provides a comprehensive and cutting edge survey of Indian cinemas, discussing Popular, Parallel/New Wave and Regional cinemas as well as the spectacular rise of Bollywood. It is an invaluable resource for students and academics of South Asian Studies, Film Studies and Cultural Studies.

Indian Film Stars
Indian Film Stars

Author: Michael Lawrence

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2020-05-28

Total Pages: 265

ISBN-13: 1844578577

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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.

Seduced by the Familiar
Seduced by the Familiar

Author: M.K. Raghavendra

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2014-12-15

Total Pages: 422

ISBN-13: 0199087989

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Hindi popular cinema has played a key role as a national cinema because it assisted in the imagining of a unified India by addressing a public across the nation-to-be even before 1947. Examining the diverse elements that constitute the 'popular' in Indian cinema, M.K. Raghavendra undertakes, in this book, a chronological study of films to speculate on narrative conventions, thematic continuities, myths, archetypes, and other formal structures that inform it from its hesitant beginnings up to the 1990s. A significant contribution to film studies, the book makes crucial connections between film motifs and other aspects of culture, exploring the development of film narrative using the social history of India as a continuing frame of reference.

Philosophical Issues in Indian Cinema
Philosophical Issues in Indian Cinema

Author: MK Raghavendra

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2020-12-13

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13: 1000296342

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This book interrogates the vocabulary used in theorizing about Indian cinema to reach into the deeper cultural meanings of philosophies and traditions from which it derives its influences. It re-examines terms and concepts used in film criticism and contextualizes them within the aesthetics, poetics and politics of Indian cinema. The book looks at terms and concepts borrowed from the scholarship on American and world cinema and explores their use and relevance in describing the characteristics and evolution of cinema in India. It highlights how realism, romance and melodrama in the context of India appear in a culturally singular way and how the aggregation of constituent elements – like songs, action, comedy – in Indian film can be traced to classical theatre and other diverse religious and philosophical influences. These influences have characterized popular film and drama in India which present all aspects of life for a diverse nation. The author explores concepts like ‘fantasy’, ‘family’ and ‘patriotism’ by using various examples from films in India and outside, as well as practices in the other arts. He identifies the fundamental logic behind the choices made by film-makers in India and discusses concepts which allow for a fresh theorizing on Indian cinema’s characteristics. This book will be of great interest to students and researchers of film studies, media studies, cultural studies, literature, cultural history and South Asian studies. It will also be useful for general readers who are interested in learning more about Indian cinema, its forms, origins and influences.

Amar Akbar Anthony
Amar Akbar Anthony

Author: William Elison

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2016-01-04

Total Pages: 345

ISBN-13: 0674504488

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The 1977 blockbuster Amar Akbar Anthony about the heroics of three Bombay brothers separated in childhood became a classic of Hindi cinema and a touchstone of Indian popular culture. Beyond its comedy and camp is a potent vision of social harmony, but one that invites critique, as the authors show.

Director's Cut
Director's Cut

Author: M K Raghavendra

Publisher: HarperCollins

Published: 2013-05-20

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 9351160408

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A critical introduction to the best of international film-makers in the last 50 years.. This is an acutely perceptive collection of essays defining the work of fifty film-makers of the modern era. The shape of cinema is today unrecognizable from that in the 1950s but film criticism has perhaps not kept pace with changes after 1960, when cinema became modern. The collection addresses this deficit by examining the most important directors since 1960. It includes the film-makers of the French New Wave and New German Cinema, extends its attention to earlier 'modernists' like Luis Bunuel and Robert Bresson and speculates on the significance of masters like Andrei Tarkovsky and popular film-makers like Steven Spielberg. It also encompasses a whole range of more recent cinema from Abbas Kiarostami to Bela Tarr. As befits the enormous variety in the range of cinema covered, each of the essays is strikingly different in its emphasis although they are all lucidly and engagingly written. Also included are definitive assessments of five key Indian film directors -Satyajit Ray, Ritwik Ghatak, Adoor Gopalakrishnan, G. Aravindan and Raj Kapoor.

Locating World Cinema
Locating World Cinema

Author: M K Raghavendra

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2020-05-31

Total Pages: 328

ISBN-13: 9389812429

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Locating World Cinema argues for the importance of understanding the local context of a film's creation and the nuances that it conveys to the spectator. It examines the sociocultural contexts intrinsic to cinema from milieus like the USSR/Russia, China, Japan, France, the US, Iran and India. The book analyses the works of some of the more celebrated but, at times, less than fully understood auteurs, such as Kenji Mizoguchi from Japan; Robert Bresson, Jacques Rivette and Éric Rohmer from France; Abbas Kiarostami from Iran; Martin Scorsese from the US; Zhang Yimou from China and Aleksei German from Russia. Further, it examines how the conditions of exhibition for art house cinema has transformed into the 'global art film' that attempts to bypass the local by addressing international audiences. The book deals with complex ideas but is lucidly written, making it accessible to film students and lay persons alike.