SCRN 225 - National Cinema

Fall 2015 Topic:  India

This course will introduce you to the various film practices of India, the world’s largest producer of films. Through popular Hindi films from the Bombay film industry, “regional” films in other languages in the popular and art cinema mode, and documentary film practice, the course will provide an overview of a diverse range of film production and consumption practices. We will trace the history of Indian cinema from the silent era, through the studio period, to state-funded “parallel cinema” or realist cinema, to the contemporary production of popular, formulaic Bollywood films as well as “multiplex cinema,” which is thematically and aesthetically more unconventional. This outline of different cinematic modes will throw light on the social, political, and economic transformations in the Indian nation-state over the last century.

Anticipated Terms Offered: Offered periodically