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Other library resource(s)
Asian film online: volumes 1 & 2 by Call Number: Electronic resourceAsian Film Online offers a view of Asian culture as seen through the lens of the independent Asian filmmaker. Through a selection of over 1,000 narrative feature films, documentaries and shorts curated by film scholars and critics, the collection offers highly relevant perspectives and insights onto themes relevant across Asia, including modernity, globalization, female agency, social and political unrest, and cultural and sexual identity. ...
Colonial film database: moving images of the British Empire by Call Number: Streaming videoThe catalogue covers all those countries that were within the British Empire until the date of their independence or the achievement of self-government as a Dominion. Over 6,000 films are cataloged, but you can only view 150 of those titles.
India from Media History Digital Library by Call Number: Electronic resourceThe popular film journal filmindia, which ran from 1935–1961, was an English-language monthly magazine published from Bombay. Its editor, Baburao Patel, was known for his sharp, witty, and opinionated writing style, and the magazine’s popularity made him a celebrity in his own right. Focused primarily on Hindi cinema, with some attention to other regional Indian cinemas as well, filmindia worked as trade paper, cinema journal, and fan magazine combined, offering a mix of celebrity gossip, film reviews, trade information, editorials, behind-the-scenes looks at film productions, and some coverage of foreign films and industries. ...- Larger than life: [India's Bollywood film culture] byCall Number: Jones Media DVD #7692This program travels through the landscape of Indian cinema, providing contrasts and comparisons with its counterpart in the west. Interviews with Shah Rukh Kahn and Manisha Koirala examine the pressures of Indian film acting.
Popular Hindi cinema from Oxford Bibliographies Online by Call Number: Electronic resourceISBN: 9780199791286Popular Hindi cinema enjoys mass appeal in a multilingual and multicultural country such as India. It also happens to be one of the few mainstream film industries that has held its own against Hollywood’s global hegemony and is popular transnationally as well.
Internet resource(s)
- Manas: Culture, Indian CinemaIndia has one of the oldest film industries in the world. Though the first film advertisement in India appeared in the Times of India on 7 July 1896, inviting people to witness the Lumiere Brothers’ moving pictures, “the wonder of the world”, it was not until early 1913 that an Indian film received a public screening. ...
- National Film Development Corporation of India (NFDC)NFDC aims to foster excellence in Indian cinema and promote the diversity of its culture by supporting and encouraging films made in various Indian languages. They also want to create domestic and global appreciation and celebration of independent Indian cinema.
Keeping up with the journal literature
Want an easy way to keep up with the journal literature for a national or regional cinema? And you use a mobile device? You can install the BrowZine app and create a custom Bookshelf of your favorite journal titles. Then you will get the Table of Contents (ToCs) of your favorite journals automatically delivered to you when they become available. Once you have the ToC's you can download and read the articles you want.
You can get the app from the App Store or Google Play.
Don't own or use a mobile device? You can still use BrowZine! It's now available in a web version. You can get to it here. The web version works the same way as the app version. Find the journals you like, create a custom Bookshelf, get ToCs and read the articles you want.
Search for new books in the collections
Find new books on Indian cinema in our online catalog.
Introduction to Indian cinema
Moving images were first screened in India on 7 July 1896 in Bombay (now Mumbai), and local filmmaking began in the following year. 1913 saw the release of the first Indian feature-length film, Raja Harishchandra/ King Harishchandra, a story from the Mahabharata by D.G. (‘Dadasaheb’) Phalke, a pioneering director who established Bombay as the centre of Indian film production. At this time, there was already a huge, largely urban working-class, cinemagoing public. By the 1920s, a number of self-sufficient production companies were established, and India’s film output had exceeded that of Britain in both quantity and profitability. Other key directors of the silent era include Baburao Painter (Vatsala Haran, 1923) and V. Shantaram (Gopal Krishna, 1929), and the most popular genres of the silent era were dramas in contemporary settings (‘socials’), for example Bilat Ferat/England Returned (Dhiren Ganguly, 1921), and ‘mythologicals’—films based around Indian legends. India’s first sound film, Alam Ara/The Light of the World, directed by Iranian expatriate Ardeshir M. Irani, appeared in 1931, a year in which twenty-seven sound features were made. But the coming of sound raised the issue of India’s many languages, ultimately resolved by the dominance of the ‘All-India’ Hindi song-and-dance film (see Bollywood cinema). Films in other Indian languages were made in centres such as Calcutta (now Kolkata) and Madras (now Chennai): aside from Hindi, the main languages in which sound films were and are made in India are Urdu, Gujarati, Marathi, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, Punjabi, Oriya, and Assamese. ...
Kuhn, A., & Westwell, G. (2020). India, film in. In A Dictionary of Film Studies. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 05 June 2023
Searching the online catalog
You can use the subject heading below to find resources in the online catalog. The call number range is also included.
- motion pictures indiaCall number range PN 1993.5 .I8 on Baker Level 4. Please note: this is not the only call number range, but it has the most items.
Introductory reading(s)
100 essential Indian films by Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1993.5 .I8 D277 2019ISBN: 9781442277984Although the motion picture industry in India is one of the oldest and largest in the world--with literally thousands of productions released each year--films from that country have not been as well received as those from other countries. Known for their impressive musical numbers, melodramatic plots, and nationally beloved stars, Indian films have long been ignored by the West but are now at the forefront of cinema studies. With the prolific number of films available, it can be difficult to know what to watch. In 100 Essential Indian Films, Rohit K. Dasgupta and Sangeeta Datta identify and discuss significant works produced since the 1930s. ...
Bollywood: a history by Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1993.5 .I8 B677 2006ISBN: 9780752428352Every year the Indian film industry produces more than a 1,000 feature films; every day 14 million Indians go to a movie; and a billion more people a year buy tickets for Indian movies than for their Hollywood-produced counterparts. Bombay's studios have taken the cinematic techniques of Hollywood and used them to produce features that have enthralled audiences throughout eastern Europe, the Middle East, and beyond. The result is the Bollywood movie, a film genre characterised by multiple song and dance routines, intense melodrama, and plots containing everything from farce to tragedy. This is the fantastic, diverse, and rich story of the social and cultural phenomenon of Bollywood and an up-close look at the men, women, and ideas that have fueled its incredible growth.
Bollywood FAQ: all that's left to know about the greatest film story never told by Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1993.5 .I8 R69 2019ISBN: 9781495082306Bollywood, a popular nomenclature for India's "national" film industry in the Hindi language, along with the Taj Mahal, yoga, Buddha, and Mahatma Gandhi, is one of the best-known introductions and universally recognized associations with India across the world today. Despite its predominant narrative styles not confirming to the First World European and/or American cinema structure, Indian cinema is increasingly viewed as the world's second-most important film industry, after Hollywood, with box-office influence crossing over with European cinema. Bollywood FAQ provides a thrilling, entertaining, and intellectually stimulating joy ride into the vibrant, colorful, and multi-emotional universe of the world's most prolific (over 30,000 film titles) and most-watched film industry (at 3 billion-plus ticket sales). ...
Encyclopaedia of Hindi cinema by Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1993.5 .I8 E53 2003ISBN: 9788179910665This title begins with seven essays providing a historical analysis of Hindi films. It then carries on to provide insight into the Indian film industry's internal dynamics. It also includes special contributions from prominent figures in the industry and interviews with Hindi film legends.
Encyclopedia of Indian cinema by Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1993.5 .I8 R277 1999ISBN: 9781579581466An exhaustive resource which includes the number of sound features released by language, a film index, a name index and a 10 page bibliography.
Evacuee cinema: Bombay and Lahore in partition transit (1940-1960) by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9781009151207This new history of partition and South Asian cinema is narrated through the careers of émigré film personnel, as well as through the distinctive genres and ancillary ventures that accompanied the aftershocks of partition. Moving beyond arguments about social contingency and political intent, the book suggests that the creative energies, production and subsequent circulation of popular cinema can offer fresh insights into partition. ...
From Bombay to Bollywood: the making of a global media industry by Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1993.5 .I8 P86 2013ISBN: 9780814729496From Bombay to Bollywood analyzes the transformation of the national film industry in Bombay into a transnational and multi-media cultural enterprise, which has come to be known as Bollywood. Combining ethnographic, institutional, and textual analyses, Aswin Punathambekar explores how relations between state institutions, the Indian diaspora, circuits of capital, and new media technologies and industries have reconfigured the Bombay-based industry's geographic reach. ...
Silent cinema in India: a pictorial journey by Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1995.75 .G37 2012ISBN: 9789350290804This extraordinary book documents a glorious phase of cinema in India – the silent cinema era. Of the approximately 1,300 silent films produced between 1913 and 1931, barely one per cent have survived, and not all of these in their entirety. The book traces the stories of its earliest practitioners, who overcame many obstacles and pioneered several innovations to develop a cinema that often matched the standards of film-making in the West. ...
Selected book title(s)
The new screen ecology in India: digital transformation of media by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9781839025716New Screen Ecology in India is an open access book that provides an in depth exploration of the digital transformation of the Indian media industry. Smith Mehta takes a deep dive into the world of social media platforms and their impact on contemporary film and television production, arguing that they have fundamentally shifted the creator dynamics of these industries. ...
Bengali cinema: 'an Other Nation' by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9780415570060Covering the years spanning cinema's emergence as a popular form in Bengal in the first half of the twentieth century, this book examines the main genres and trends produced by this cinema, and leads up to Bengali cinema's last phase of transition in the 1980s. Arguing that Bengali cinema has been a key economic and social institution, the author highlights that the Bengali filmic imaginary existed over and above the imaginary of the Indian nation. ...
Bombay cinema: an archive of the city by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9780816649426Cinema 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. In Bombay 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. ...
Global Bollywood by Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1993.5 .I8 G53 2008ISBN: 9780814747995Bollywood is one of the most prolific film industries in the world. Based in Mumbai (formerly Bombay), the industry churns out hundreds of films each year--primarily melodramatic films with music and elaborately choreographed dance routines.- Hours in the dark: essays on cinema byCall Number: Baker-Berry PN 1993.5 .A1 V253 1996ISBN: 9780195637649This book collects nearly three decades of film criticism by one of India's most noted critics. It includes discussion of individual films, both Indian and Western, a special section on Satyajit Ray, general pieces on the concerns of modern Indian cinema, and accounts of the author's encounters with acclaimed directors.
Indian popular cinema: a narrative of cultural change by Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1993.5 .I8 G64 2004ISBN: 9781858563299Publication Date: Rev. and updated ed.The book reviews nine decades of Indian popular cinema and examines its immense influence on people in India and its diaspora. Since it was published in 1998, Indian film has developed in new directions. As films today vie with Indian soap operas for popularity, film making in India has acquired 'industry status' and consequently has greater accountability to its public. All this is reflected in this new and extensively revised edition of Indian Popular Cinema. It tracks the rise of "designer cinema," reviews the increasingly significant Tamil cinema, and considers films made by Indians in the diaspora.
Madhuri Dixit by Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 2888 .D59 B67 2019ISBN: 9781844576296A wide-ranging account of the Indian film star Madhuri Dixit, one of the most popular actresses of Hindi cinema. Nandana Bose's study traces Dixit's twenty-five year career, exploring her star persona, her indelible impact on Indian popular culture, and her continuing popularity even in middle age. Nandana Bose discusses Dixit's unusual and distinctive career trajectory that upends pre-existing models of female stardom, by marrying at the peak of her career, withdrawing from the limelight for years, and then returning to extend her career into her early fifties by reinventing herself as a transmedia celebrity for a new generation. ...
Seduced by the familiar: narration and meaning in Indian popular cinema by Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1993.5 .I8 R27244 2008ISBN: 9780195696547The Hindi film industry has come to represent 'India' in the world today. Drawing from this 'globalization' of 'Bollywood', Seduced by the Familiar is a contemporary take on Indian cinema as represented by Hindi films. The author, M.K. Raghavendra, an award-winning film critic and scholar, makes a case for the 'surface' reading of Hindi films, in contrast to the rather disparaging view that critics, and sometimes practitioners, have traditionally taken of 'popular' cinema. ...
The shepherdess and the seven songs by Call Number: Streaming videoBased on a folktale by Rajasthani writer Vidaydan Detha as well as the life and poetry of 14th century Kashmiri mystic Lalleshwari, Shepherdess follows a young bride, Laila (Navjot Randhawa) who marries into a tribe of nomadic Bakarwal herders. Already harassed by local police as a minority, Laila finds herself targeted for her remarkable beauty by local officials. Her implacable and ingenious manipulation of the men who want to possess her, and the patriarchy that wants to crush her, plays out in a series of seven chapters.
Sirens of modernity: world cinema via Bombay by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9780520976788By the 1960s, Hindi-language films from Bombay were in high demand not only for domestic and diasporic audiences but also for sizable non-diasporic audiences across Eastern Europe, Central Asia, the Middle East, and the Indian Ocean world. Often confounding critics who painted the song-dance films as noisy and nonsensical, if not dangerously seductive and utterly vulgar, Bombay films attracted fervent worldwide viewers precisely for their elements of romance, music, and spectacle. In this richly documented history of Hindi cinema during the long 1960s, Samhita Sunya historicizes the emergence of world cinema as a category of cinematic diplomacy that formed in the crucible of the Cold War. ...
Violent belongings: partition, gender, and national culture in postcolonial India by Call Number: Baker-Berry PR 129 .S64 D35 2008ISBN: 9781592137435Focusing on the historical and contemporary narration of the Partition of India, Violent Belongings examines transnational South Asian culture from 1947 onwards. Spanning the Indian subcontinent and its diasporas in the United Kingdom and the United States, it asks how postcolonial/diasporic literature (eg., Rushdie, Mistry, Sidwa and Lahiri), Bollywood film, personal testimonies and journalism represent the violence, migration and questions of national belonging unleashed by that pivotal event during which two million people died and sixteen million were displaced. In addition to challenging the official narratives of independence and Partition, these narratives challenge our contemporary understanding of gender and ethnicity in history and politics. ...
Finding scholarly articles & journal title(s)
You can find scholarly articles about Indian cinema in a variety of publications. We don't have a journal specific to Indian cinema, but you can search in film journals for articles. You can use Film & Television Literature Index, the Screen Studies Collection or Web of Science to find articles or use the search box at the top of the page.
BioScope: South Asian screen studies by Call Number: Electronic journalBioScope: South Asian Screen Studies is a blind peer-reviewed journal published biannually. They encourage theoretical and empirical research both on located screen practices and wider networks, linkages, and patterns of circulation. This involves research into the historical, regional, and virtual spaces of screen cultures, including globalized and multi-sited conditions of production and circulation. There is special attention given to archival research and field work. This includes documentation and ethnographic inquiry into media institutions and industries, and their modes of regulation, for example, the policies, debates and practices of urban administration, censorship regimes, and intellectual property regulation. ...
Film & television literature indexCall Number: Electronic resourceThis index covers over 300 journal and magazine titles for film and television reviews, scholarly and critical analysis of cinema and television, and articles of popular interest about film and television. About half the journals and magazines are film periodicals and the other half cover film and television with some regularity. Subject coverage includes film & television theory, preservation & restoration, writing, production, cinematography, technical aspects, and reviews.
Bibliography of Asian studiesCall Number: Electronic resourceThis database has citations to western-language journal articles, book chapters, conference proceedings, anthologies, Festschriften, etc. about to East, Southeast, and South Asia.
Screen studies collection by Call Number: Electronic resourceA comprehensive survey of current publications related to film scholarship alongside detailed filmographies. This collection includes the FIAF International Index to Film Periodicals Database and the detailed and complementary filmographies created by the American Film Institute (AFI) and the British Film Institute.
The web of science citation databases by Call Number: Electronic resourceThe online version of 3 separate ISI indexes: Arts & Humanities Citation Index, Science Citation Index and, Social Sciences Citation Index.
Selected movie title(s)
Find more Indian cinema titles in the library's online catalog.
Dhoom 2: back in action by Call Number: Jones Media DVD #7375 discs 1-2Three cops (Chopra, Bachchan and Basu) are caught in a global game of cat and mouse with two of the most notorious, high tech thieves still at large (Roshan and Rai).
Kandukondain kandukondain = I have found it by Call Number: Jones Media DVD #3048Rich and pampered sisters Sowmya and Meenakshi want for nothing except the true love their hearts crave. While Sowmya grudginly places family responsibilities ahead of romance, Meenakshi years for a white knight. Manohar, an aspiring filmmaker, falls for Sowmya but will wed her only after directing his first film. Commando Major Bala woos Meenakshi despite physical and emotional war wounds and competition from Srikanth. But with the patriarch's health ebbing, the romantic storm Meenakshi and Sowmya wished for may soon be eclipsed by the harsh realities of modern life.
Lagaan = Lagāna: once upon a time in India by Call Number: Jones Media DVD #1650An arrogant British Army captain forces a bet on a group of farmers. If they can win a cricket match against the army team, they will not have to pay the tax called lagaan for three years.
Laila Majnu by Call Number: Jones Media DVD #18773Hindi adaptation of the Arabic folk tale of the timeless love between Laila and Majnu.
Lajja = Lajjā by Call Number: Jones Media DVD #14556The story of a woman's journey through a difficult life, and how she rebels against it. The film focuses on the atrocities experienced by women in India. Vaidehi, who lives in New York, is unable to tolerate her unfaithful husband any longer and flees to India. She meets Maithili, a runaway bride, Janki, an actress and unwed mother, and Ramdulaari, a feminist whose goal is to change women's role in society, but who gets publicly gang raped when her son breaks the societal norm when he falls in love with the daughter of the village strongman.
Raajneeti by Call Number: Jones Media DVD #13398Raajneeti is a story about Indian politics. About Indian democracy. About Indian elections. Above all, it is the story of a few people who control the destiny of millions. It is the story of their unstoppable ambition, and their bitter and violent battle to achieve it. This is the story of people who understand power- and know how to wield it at will. Raajneeti is about politics. And beyond.
Rumer Godden's The River by Call Number: Jones Media DVD #7334ISBN: 9780780029620The film eloquently contrasts the growing pains of three young women with the immutability of the holy Bengal River in India, around which their daily lives unfold. Harriet lives in a house overlooking the river with her English family. One day, a young American arrives at the home of his cousin, Mr. John, a widower who lives next door to Harriet's family. The young man becomes the focus of attention for Harriet, her older friend Valerie, and for Mr. John's half-Indian daughter Melanie.
The world of Apu by Call Number: Jones Media DVD #6657ISBN: 9781404941014Landmark Indian drama about a hopeful student, who marries to save a bride from disgrace. The crowning finish to the Apu trilogy.
