Hindi Cinema -- A Short Research Guide

Vinay Lal, January 2006

N.B.  A fuller, though quite skewed, bibliography until 2000 can be found in the Rajadhyaksha and Willemen volume, Encyclopaedia of Indian Cinema, cited below.  

*Recommended (though not always without reservations)

Ahmed, Akbar S.  “Bombay Films:  The Cinema as Metaphor for Indian Society and Politics.”  Modern Asian Studies 26, no. 2 (1992), pp. 289-320.

Aziz, Ashraf.  Light of the Universe:  Essays on Hindustani Film Music.  New Delhi:  Three Essays Collective, 2003.

Barnouw, Erik and S. Krishnaswamy.  Indian Film.  2^nd ed.  New York:  Oxford UP, 1980.

*Chakaravarty, Sumita S.  National Identity in Indian Popular Cinema 1947-1987.  Austin:  University of Texas Press, 1993.

Chatterjee, Gayatri.  Mother India.  London:  British Film Institute, 2002.

Chowdhry, Prem.  Colonial India and the Making of Empire Cinema:  Image, Ideology and Identity.  Manchester:  Manchester UP, 2000.

Cooper, Darius.  In Black and White:  Hollywood and the Melodrama of Guru Dutt.  Kolkata:  Seagull Books, 2005.

Dasgupta, Chidananda.  The Painted Face:  Studies in India’s Popular Cinema.  New Delhi:  Roli Books, 1992.

Desai, Jigna.  Beyond Bollywood:  The Cultural Politics of South Asian Diasporic Film.  New ed.  London:  Routledge, 2003.

Dissanayake, Wimal and M. Sahai.  Sholay:  A Cultural Reading.  New Delhi:  Wiley Eastern, 1992.

Doraiswamy, Rashmi.  “Changing Narrative Strategies.”  Cinemaya 23 (1994), pp. 4-12.

Dudrah, Rajinder Kumar.  Bollywood:  Sociology Goes to the Movies.  Delhi:  Sage Publications, 2006.

Dwyer, Rachel.  All You Want is Money, All You Need is Love:  Sexuality and Romance in Indian Cinema.  London:  Cassell, 2002.

Dwyer, Rachel.  100 Bollywood Films.  BFI Screen Guides.  London:  British Film Institute, 2006.

*Dwyer, Rachel and Divia Patel.  Cinema India:  The Visual Culture of Hindi Film.  London:  Reaktion Books; Brunswick, New Jersey:  Rutgers University Press, 2002.

*Dwyer, Rachel and Christopher Pinney, eds.  The History, Politics and Consumption of Public Culture in India.  Delhi:  Oxford UP, 2001; Oxford India Paperbacks, 2002.

Gangar, Amrit.  “Films from the City of Dreams”, in Sujata Patel and Alice Thorner, eds., Bombay:  Mosaic of Modern Culture (Delhi:  Oxford UP, 1996), pp. 210-224.

Ganti, Tejaswini.  Bollywood:  A Guide to Popular Hindi Cinema.  New York:  Routledge, 2004.

Gokulsing, K. Moti and Wimal Dissanayake.  Indian Popular Cinema:  A Narrative of Cultural Change.  Hyderabad:  Orient Longman, 1998.

*Gopalan, Lalitha.  Cinema of Interruptions:  Action Genres in Contemporary Indian Cinema.  London:  British Film Institute, 2002.

Government of India.  Report of the Indian Cinematograph Committee 1927-28.  Delhi:  Central Publications Branch, 1928.

Government of India.  Report of the Film Inquiry Committee.  New Delhi:  Government of India Press, 1951.

Haggard, Stephen.  “Mass Media and the Visual Arts in Twentieth-Century South Asia:  Indian Film Posters 1947-Present.”  South Asia Research 8, no. 2 (May 1988), pp. 71-87.

Hardgrave, Robert L, Jr.  “When Starts Displace the Gods:  The Folk Culture of Cinema in Tamil Nadu.”  In idem, Essays in the Political Sociology of South India (Delhi:  Usha Publications, 1979), pp. 92-124.

Kabir, Nasreen Munni.  Talking Films:  Conversations on Hindi Cinema with Javed Akhtar.  New Delhi:  Oxford UP, 1996.

Kabir, Nasreen Munni.  Guru Dutt:  A Life in Cinema.  Delhi:  Oxford UP, 1996; Oxford India Paperbacks, 2003.

Kapur, Geeta.  “Mythic Material in Indian Cinema.”  Journal of Arts and Ideas, nos. 14-15 (July-December 1987), pp. 79-107.

Kaur, Raminder and Ajay J. Sinha, eds.  Bollyworld:  Popular Indian Cinema through a Transnational Lens.  New Delhi:  Sage Publications, 2005.

Kazmi, Fareed.  The Politics of India’s Conventional Cinema:  Imaging a Universe, Subverting a Multiverse.  New Delhi:  Sage Publications, 1999.

*Lal, Vinay and Ashis Nandy, eds.  Fingerprinting Popular Culture:  The Mythic and the Iconic in Indian Cinema.  Delhi:  Oxford UP, 2006.

Mandel, Peter.  Cassette Culture:  Popular Music and Technology in North India.  Chicago:  University of Chicago Press, 1993.

Manto, Saadat Hasan.  Stars from Another Sky:  The Bombay Film World of the 1940s.  Trans. from Urdu by Khalid Hasan.  New Delhi:  Penguin Books, 1998.

Mishra, Vijay.  “Towards a Theoretical Critique of Bombay Cinema.”  Screen 26, nos. 3-4 (May-August 1985), pp. 133-151.

Mishra, Vijay.  “Decentring History:  Some Versions of Bombay Cinema.”  East-West Film Journal 6, no. 1 (January 1992), pp. 111-155.

*Nandy, Ashis, ed.  The Secret Politics of Our Desires:  Innocence, Culpability and Indian Popular Cinema.  Delhi:  Oxford UP; London:  Zed Books, 1996.

Prakash, Sanjeev.  “Genres in Indian Cinema.”  Journal of Arts and Ideas, no. 9 (Oct-Dec 1984), pp. 23-33.  [Review of Vasudev and Lenglet, below.]

*Prasad, Madhava. Ideology of the Hindi Film:  A Historical Construction.  Delhi:  Oxford UP, 1990.

_____.  “Cinema and the Desire for Modernity.”  Journal of Arts and Ideas, nos. 25-26 (December 1993), pp. 71-86.

Rajadhyaksha, Ashish.  “Neo-Traditionalism:  Film as Popular Art in India.”  Framework, nos. 32-33 (1986), pp. 20-67.

_____.  “The Phalke Era:  Conflict of Traditional Form and Modern Technology.”  Journal of Arts and Ideas, nos. 14-15 (July-Dec 1987), pp. 47-108.

_____.  “The Epic Melodrama:  Themes of Nationality in Indian Cinema.”  Journal of Arts & Ideas, nos. 25-26 (December 1993), pp. 55-70.

*Rajadhyaksha, Ashish and Paul Willemen.  Encyclopaedia of Indian Cinema.  London:  British Film Institute; Delhi:  Oxford UP, 1994; 2^nd ed., Oxford UP, 2001.

Sanghvi, Malavika Rajbans.  “Where Doubles Dare.”  Sunday (13-18 November 1998), pp. 76-80.

Thomas, Rosie.  “Indian Cinema:  Pleasures and Popularity.”  Screen 26, nos. 3-4 (May-August 1985), pp. 116-131.

Thoraval, Yves.  Cinemas of India (1896-2000).  New Delhi:  Macmillan, 2000.

Torgovnick, Jonathan.  Bollywood Dreams.  New ed.  London:  Phaidon, 2004.

Vanita, Ruth.  “Dosti and Tamanna:  Male-Male Love, Difference, and Normativity in Hindi Cinema”, in Diane Mines and Sarah Lamb, eds., Everyday Life in South Asia (Bloomington:  Indiana UP, 2002), pp. 146-58.

Vasudev, Aruna, ed.  Frames of Mind.  Delhi: UBS Publishers, 1996.

Vasudev, Aruna and Philippe Lenglet, eds., Indian Cinema Superbazaar (Delhi:  Vikas, 1983).

Vasudevan, Ravi.  “Film Studies, New Cultural History and Experience of Modernity.”  Economic and Political Weekly (4 November 1995), pp. 2809-2814.

*Vasudevan, Ravi, ed.  Making Meaning in Indian Cinema.  Delhi:  Oxford UP, 2000; Oxford India Paperbacks, 2002.

Vinnels, Daniel and Brent Skelly.  Bollywood Showplaces:  Cinema Theatres in India.  London:  E & E Plumridge, 2002.

*Virdi, Jyotika.  The Cinematic ImagiNation:  Indian Popular Films as Social History.  New Brunswick, New Jersey:  Rutgers UP, 2003.