Bombay Cinema

Cinema is not only a major industry in India, it is a powerful cultural force. But until now, no one has undertaken a major examination of the ways in which films made in Bombay mediate the urban experience in India. InBombay Cinema,Ranjani Mazumdar takes a multidisciplinary approach to understanding Bombay cinema as the unofficial archive of the city in India. In this analysis of the cinematic city, Mazumdar reveals a complex postnationalist world, convulsed by the social crisis of the 1970s and transformed by the experience of globalization in the 1990s. She argues that the upheaval of postcolonial nationalism led to Bombay cinemars"s articulation of urban life in entirely new terms. Specifically, the place of the village in the imaginary constitution of anticolonial nationalism gave way to a greater acknowledgment, even centrality, of urban space.Bombay Cinematakes the reader on an inventive journey through a cinematic city of mass crowds, violence, fashion, architectural fantasies, and subcultural identities. Moving through the world of gangsters and vamps, families and drifters, and heroes and villains, Bombay Cinema explores an urban landscape marked by industrial decline, civic crisis, working-class disenchantment, and diverse street life. Combining the anecdotal with the theoretical, the philosophical with the political, and the textual with the historical,Bombay Cinemaleads the reader into the heart of the urban labyrinth in India, revising and deepening our understanding of both the city and the cinema. Ranjani Mazumdar is an independent filmmaker and associate professor of film studies at the School of Art and Aesthetics at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India.

Ranjani Mazumdar is an independent filmmaker and associate professor of cinema studies at the School of Arts and Aesthetics at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India.