Bengali Cinema: 'An Other Nation'

ISBN-13: 9780415570060 / Angielski / Twarda / 2010 / 234 str.

Sharmistha Gooptu

Opis

This book is the first comprehensive historical work on Bengali cinema. It covers the years spanning cinema’s emergence as a popular form in Bengal in the first half of the twentieth century, studies the main genres and trends produced by this cinema, and leads up to Bengali cinema’s last phase of transition in the 1980s, which produced its contemporary avatar. Arguing that Bengali cinema has been a key economic and social institution, which must be considered for what it brings to bear upon our existing sense of Bengali and Indian history, the author highlights that the Bengali filmic imaginary existed over and above the imaginary of the Indian nation.
This book constructs a definitive history of Bengali cinema, and makes a case for this history as positing an alternative understanding to the currently influential notion of the Hindi film as the ‘Indian’ or ‘national’ cinema. It argues that the Bengali cinema presents a history which brings to the fore the deeply contested terrain of ‘national’ cinema, as also its ultimate subversion, and posits the creation of an “alternative imaginary” of the Bengali film. The case of the Bengali cinema demonstrates the emergence of a public domain that set up a definitive discourse of difference with respect to the “all-India” Hindi film (popularly classified as Bollywood cinema), thus preempting, consciously, its own subsumption within the more pervasive culture of the Bombay Hindi cinema. While Bengali cinema could not ultimately compete with the “all-India” Hindi film, it was able to create a domain which steadfastly resisted the construction of India as a Hindi-nation.

Spis treści

Introduction The Early Years 1. The Idea of a 'Bengali' Cinema 2. Bengal and a 'National' Cinema: New Theatres Ltd 3. The Transition to a 'Regional' Cinema 4. Bengali Love-Stories: Uttam-Suchitra and the Golden Era of Bengali Cinema 5. Common Man's Comedy: the Bhanu Factor 6. Satyajit Ray and the Bengali Cinema 7. Changing COntext, New Texts: Bengali Cinema and Another Bengaliness Epilogue

O autorze

Sharmistha Gooptu is a founder and managing trustee of the South Asia Research Foundation (SARF), a not-for-profit research body based in India. SARF’s current project SAG (South Asian Gateway) is in partnership with Taylor and Francis, and involves the creation of what will be the largest South Asian digital database of historical materials. She is also the joint editor of the journal South Asian History and Culture (Routledge) and the Routledge South Asian History and Culture book series.