The Cinemas of India : 1896-2000

Contents: Foreword. Preface. Acknowledgements. 1. The Cinemas of India (1896-2000). 2. The talkie : the beginning of a golden age. 3. The supremacy of Hindi cinema. 4. 1960-1990 : escapism, formulas and star system. 5. ‘New Indian cinema’—the rise of ‘Auteur’ cinema. 6. The regional cinemas. 7. Tamil cinema. 8. Telugu cinema. 9. Kannada cinema. 10. Malayalam cinema. 11. At the foot of the Himalayas : the cinemas of Assam and Manipur. 12. A few words about the cinema of Orissa. 13. Post-Scriptum 2000 : towards a ‘commercial-middle cinema’? 14. Indian feature film production (1990-1999). Bibliography. Index.

"Born at the same time as in the West, over a century, Indian cinema, has today earned the pride of place as the world’s largest cinematographic industry. Dynamic and professional, it seems that the Indians are never tired of seeing images on the screen, a trend that causes alarm to the Hollywood film industry (having patterned the first integrated Indian Studios in the 1930s-50s in Bombay), which has its eye on such a luscious market, given its recent efforts at dubbing American blockbusters into Hindi and Tamil for release in theatres. But the Seventh Art is totally integrated into the Indian millennial tradition of images and plastic and performing arts, taking up all the ‘genres’ and reflecting the diversity of the cultures, languages and musics of a country as vast as a continent. This is why this book’s title is plural, The Cinemas of India, a journey through the galaxy of Indian films and filmmakers, mostly Auteurs, since the very beginning of cinema in India and its full instrumentalisation by the pioneer Dadasaheb Phalke. And the reader will also make substantial incursions into the ‘dream factories’ of ‘commercial’ cinema, mostly in Mumbai’s Bollywood, Chennai and Hyderabad.

As of now, the distinction between auteur and commercial films might be less relevant in the coming years, as the emerging blend of both the genres is beginning to appear to attract the new generation, tired of a certain regularity of recipes as old as the cinemas of India themselves.

A comprehensive guide to wade through the world of Indian cinema, from 1896 to 2000, this book, an enlarged edition of the original French title, Les cinemas de L’Inde, presents its multiple regional facets illustrated by filmmakers that the world is now beginning to discover—represented historically and through their protagonists and film in the west, in Mumbai (Bombay); in the east, in Calcutta, which remains a centre of cultural innovation; but also in the northeast, in Assam, Manipur, Orissa; and, in the south, in Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai (Madras), Thiruvananthapuram (Trivandrum). A work of indispensable referral value, may this book give the desire to the Indians to care more about the grandeur of their cinemas and to the non-Indian readers to pay far more attention to the beauties that all the cinemas of India have to offer...." (jacket)