Indian Cinema: A Very Short Introduction: Metaphysics and Epistemology
Here's a startling fact: one in five films screened globally originates from India. Yet despite this staggering output, Bollywood generates merely a fraction of Hollywood's earnings. Rajadhyaksha's slim but mighty volume unpacks this curious contradiction with precision and insight. The journey begins under colonial shadows, tracing how Indian filmmakers transformed their craft into a vehicle for social critique. Questions of caste discrimination, gender oppression, communal violence, and urban alienation found expression on screen. The industry became a mirror reflecting the nation's contradictions and struggles. What emerges from these pages is cinema as something far more than entertainment. It's a cultural force that grappled with India's fractured identity throughout the twentieth century and beyond. From the silent era through digital innovation, Rajadhyaksha examines how filmmakers navigated rapid modernisation, colonial legacies, and competing visions of what India could become. The author explores the political machinery and economic pressures that shaped production, distribution, and storytelling. He reveals how regional traditions, commercial pressures, and artistic ambition collided and merged. The result? A distinctive cinematic language unlike anything produced elsewhere. Compact yet comprehensive, this introduction rewards curious readers keen to understand how a nation tells itself through film.
- Author: Ashish Rajadhyaksha
- Publisher: OUP Oxford
- Genre: Photography
- ISBN: 978-0198723097
- Pages: 160 pages