A Companion to Indian Cinema - (Wiley Blackwell Companions to National Cinemas) by Neepa Majumdar & Ranjani Mazumdar (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

A new collection in the Wiley Blackwell Companions to National Cinemas series, featuring the cinemas of India

In A Companion to Indian Cinema, film scholars Neepa Majumdar and Ranjani Mazumdar along with 25 established and emerging scholars, deliver new research on contemporary and historical questions on Indian cinema. The collection considers Indian cinema's widespread presence both within and outside the country, and pays particular attention to regional cinemas such as Bhojpuri, Bengali, Malayalam, Manipuri, and Marathi. The volume also reflects on the changing dimensions of technology, aesthetics, and the archival impulse of film. The editors have included scholarship that discusses a range of films and film experiences that include commercial cinema, art cinema, and non-fiction film.

Even as scholarship on earlier decades of Indian cinema is challenged by the absence of documentation and films, the innovative archival and field work in this Companion extends from cinema in early twentieth century India to a historicized engagement with new technologies and contemporary cinematic practices. There is a focus on production cultures and circulation, material cultures, media aesthetics, censorship, stardom, non-fiction practices, new technologies, and the transnational networks relevant to Indian cinema.

Suitable for undergraduate and graduate students of film and media studies, South Asian studies, and history, A Companion to Indian Cinema is also an important new resource for scholars with an interest in the context and theoretical framework for the study of India's moving image cultures.

From the Back Cover

A new collection on Indian cinema in the Wiley Blackwell Companions to National Cinemas series

In A Companion to Indian Cinema, film scholars Neepa Majumdar and Ranjani Mazumdar bring together 25 established and emerging scholars to deliver new research on contemporary and historical questions on Indian cinema. Engaging with current debates in film and media studies, the collection reflects on production cultures, media infrastructures, material cultures, censorship, stardom, media aesthetics and circulation, and Indian cinema's movement through transnational networks. From regional cinemas such as Bhojpuri, Bengali, Malayalam, Manipuri, and Marathi to Indian cinema in China, the chapters also span the range from art cinema to commercial Bombay/Bollywood to B movie circuits. Even as scholarship on earlier decades of Indian cinema is challenged by the absence of documentation and films, the innovative archival and field work in this volume extends from cinema in early twentieth century India to a historicized engagement with more recent dimensions of technology, aesthetics, and the archival impulse of film.

Suitable for undergraduate and graduate students of film and media studies, South Asian studies, and history, A Companion to Indian Cinema is also an important new resource for other scholars with an interest in the context and theoretical framework for the study of India's moving image cultures.

About the Author

Neepa Majumdar is Associate Professor of Film & Media Studies in the English Department at the University of Pittsburgh. She is the author of Wanted Cultured Ladies Only! Female Stardom and Cinema in India, 1930s to 1950s (University of Illinois Press, 2009). Her research interests include film sound, star studies, South Asian early cinema, and documentary film. She is co-editor of the journals [In]Transition: Journal of Videographic Film and Moving Image Studies and Music, Sound, and the Moving Image.

Ranjani Mazumdar is Professor of Cinema Studies at the School of Arts & Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi. She is the author of Bombay Cinema: An Archive of the City (University of Minnesota Press, 2007) and guest editor of a special issue of Bioscope on cinema and techno materiality (2013). Her current research interests include globalization and film culture, intermedial encounters, and the intersection of technology, travel, design, and color in 1960s Bombay Cinema.