Shyam Benegal’s India

Shyam Benegal’s India PDF Author: Vivek Sachdeva
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 0429559097
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 283

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book examines Shyam Benegal’s films and alternative image(s) of India in his cinema, and traces the trajectory of changing aesthetics of his cinema in the post-liberalisation era. The book engages with the challenges faced by India as a nation-state in post-colonial times. Looking at hybrid and complex narratives of films like Manthan, Junoon, Kalyug, Charandas Chor, Sooraj Ka Satvaan Ghoda, Zubeidaa and Well Done Abba , among others, it analyses how these stories and characters, adapted and derived from mythology, folk-tales, historical fiction and novels, are rooted in the socio-political contexts of modern India. The author explores diverse themes in Benegal’s cinema such as the loss of home and identity, women’s sexuality, and the status of dalits and Muslims in India. He also focuses on how the filmmaker expertly weaves history with myth, culture, and contemporary politics and discusses the debate around the interpretive value of film adaptations, adaptation of history and the representations of marginalised communities and liminal spaces. The book will be useful for students and researchers of film studies, cultural studies, and the humanities. It will also interest readers of Indian cinema and the social and cultural history of India.

Shyam Benegal’s India

Shyam Benegal’s India PDF Author: Vivek Sachdeva
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 0429559097
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 283

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book examines Shyam Benegal’s films and alternative image(s) of India in his cinema, and traces the trajectory of changing aesthetics of his cinema in the post-liberalisation era. The book engages with the challenges faced by India as a nation-state in post-colonial times. Looking at hybrid and complex narratives of films like Manthan, Junoon, Kalyug, Charandas Chor, Sooraj Ka Satvaan Ghoda, Zubeidaa and Well Done Abba , among others, it analyses how these stories and characters, adapted and derived from mythology, folk-tales, historical fiction and novels, are rooted in the socio-political contexts of modern India. The author explores diverse themes in Benegal’s cinema such as the loss of home and identity, women’s sexuality, and the status of dalits and Muslims in India. He also focuses on how the filmmaker expertly weaves history with myth, culture, and contemporary politics and discusses the debate around the interpretive value of film adaptations, adaptation of history and the representations of marginalised communities and liminal spaces. The book will be useful for students and researchers of film studies, cultural studies, and the humanities. It will also interest readers of Indian cinema and the social and cultural history of India.

Shyam Benegal

Shyam Benegal PDF Author: Samir Chopra
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350063568
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 209

Get Book Here

Book Description
For over forty years, Shyam Benegal has been one the leading forces in Indian cinema. Informed by a rich political and philosophical sensibility and a mastery of the art and craft of filmmaking, Benegal is both of, and not of, Bollywood. As a philosophical filmmaker Benegal brings to life the existential crisis of the downtrodden Indian, the 'subaltern' if you will-the serf, the peasant, the woman-and imposes a distinctive philosophical vision on his cinematic reworkings of literary products. To understand Benegal's cinema is to understand, through his lens, modern India's continued process of political and social becoming. Focusing on the philosophical depth of Benegal's oueuvre, Samir Chopra identifies three key aspects of his work: - A trio of films which signalled to middle-class India that a revolt was brewing in India's hinterlands - Two sets of movies which make powerful feminist statements and bring viewers into the lives of Indian women by showcasing strong, interesting female characters - Benegal the master storyteller, who possessed of a unique fabulist style in a reboot of the Indian epic Mahabharata, a Ruskin Bond novel set during the Indian Mutiny of 1857, and a Rashomon-like retelling of an Indian experimental novel, where three perspectives converge to form a unified whole

New Indian Cinema in Post-Independence India

New Indian Cinema in Post-Independence India PDF Author: Anuradha Needham
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135021341
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 238

Get Book Here

Book Description
Shyam Benegal is an Indian director and screenwriter whose work is considered central to New Indian cinema. By closely analysing several of Benegal’s films, this book provides an understanding of India’s post-independence history. The book examines the filmmaker’s focus on women by highlighting his subtle and critical engagement with a truism of Indian nationalism: women’s centrality to the (nation-) state’s negotiation with modernity. It looks at the importance Benegal accords to history – its little known, contested, or iconic events and figures – in crafting national culture and identities, and goes on to discuss the filmmaker’s nuanced representation of the developmental agendas of the nation-state. The book presents an account of the relationship of historical film and fiction to official history, and provides a fuller understanding of Indian cinema, and how it is shaped by as well as itself shapes national imperatives. Filling a gap in the literature, the book offers an analysis of cinematic treatment of post-independence narratives and gives important insights into the imagination of the time. It is a useful contribution for students and scholars of Film Studies, South Asian History and South Asian Culture.

Satyajit Ray on Cinema

Satyajit Ray on Cinema PDF Author: Satyajit Ray
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231535473
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 208

Get Book Here

Book Description
Satyajit Ray, one of the greatest auteurs of twentieth century cinema, was a Bengali motion-picture director, writer, and illustrator who set a new standard for Indian cinema with his Apu Trilogy: Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road) (1955), Aparajito (The Unvanquished) (1956), and Apur Sansar (The World of Apu) (1959). His work was admired for its humanism, versatility, attention to detail, and skilled use of music. He was also widely praised for his critical and intellectual writings, which mirror his filmmaking in their precision and wide-ranging grasp of history, culture, and aesthetics. Spanning forty years of Ray's career, these essays, for the first time collected in one volume, present the filmmaker's reflections on the art and craft of the cinematic medium and include his thoughts on sentimentalism, mass culture, silent films, the influence of the French New Wave, and the experience of being a successful director. Ray speaks on the difficulty of adapting literary works to screen, the nature of the modern film festival, and the phenomenal contributions of Jean-Luc Godard and the Indian actor, director, producer, and singer Uttam Kumar. The collection also features an excerpt from Ray's diaries and reproduces his sketches of famous film personalities, such as Sergei Eisenstein, Charlie Chaplin, and Akira Kurosawa, in addition to film posters, photographs by and of the artist, film stills, and a filmography. Altogether, the volume relays the full extent of Ray's engagement with film and offers extensive access to the thought of one of the twentieth-century's leading Indian intellectuals.

The Crisis of Secularism in India

The Crisis of Secularism in India PDF Author: Anuradha Dingwaney Needham
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 9780822338468
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 436

Get Book Here

Book Description
In this timely, nuanced collection, twenty leading cultural theorists assess the contradictory ideals, policies, and practices of secularism in India.

Shyam Benegal

Shyam Benegal PDF Author: Sangeeta Datta
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1838718176
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 353

Get Book Here

Book Description
Shyam Benegal is the best known and most prolific contemporary film-maker from India's arthouse or 'New Cinema' tradition. This work traces a career with its beginnings in political cinema and a realist aesthetic. Sangeeta Datta demonstrates how the struggles of women and the dispossessed and marginalised in Indian society have found an eloquent expression in films as diverse as Nishant, Bhumika, Mandi, Suraj Ka Satwan Ghoda and Kalyug. The book also traces Benegal's work with his protégés and collaborators including many of the biggest names in Indian Cinema - Shabana Azmi, Smita Patil, Naseeruddin Shah, Karishma Kapoor and A.R. Rahman.

Visions of Development

Visions of Development PDF Author: Peter Sutoris
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781849045711
Category : Community development
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
Visions of Development examines the Indian state's postcolonial development ideology between Independence in 1947 and the Emergency of 1975-77. Sutoris pioneers a novel methodology for the study of development thought and its cinematic representations, analysing films made by the Films Division of India between 1948 and 1975. By comparing these documentaries to late-colonial films on 'progress', his book highlights continuities with and departures from colonial notions of development in modern India. It is the first scholarly volume to be published on the history of Indian documentary film. Of the approximately 250 documentaries analysed by Peter Sutoris, many of which have never been discussed in the existing literature, most are concerned with economic planning and industrialisation, large dams, family planning, schemes aimed at the integration of tribal peoples (Adivasis) into society, and civic education. Almost all films analysed in this volume are available for free online viewing through the website of the Films Division. Links are provided on the companion website www.visionsofdevelopment.com.

Benegal on Ray

Benegal on Ray PDF Author: Shyam Benegal
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 168

Get Book Here

Book Description
In this unusual book, Satyajit Ray, the internationally renowned filmmaker, is seen on the sets and at home through the lens of contemporary film director Shyam Benegal. In conversation with a fellow artist for whom he has considerable respect, Ray opens up in a manner rarely seen, reminiscing about his childhood and growing years, discussing his oeuvre, responding to questions on his craft and exploring memories immortalized in his films. The result is a discovery of the private person as much as a look at his work a close up of a major figure in world cinema. Conceived around Shyam Benegal s two-hour long film on Satyajit Ray, this volume brings together the script of the film, selections from Benegal s extensive interviews with Ray, and a rare selection of visual material documenting Ray as designer, illustrator, film director and scriptwriter.

Under Her Spell

Under Her Spell PDF Author: Dileep Padgaonkar
Publisher: Penguin Books India
ISBN: 9780670081547
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 284

Get Book Here

Book Description
He Had Come To See A World At The End Of One Period Of History And At The Beginning Of Another More Dramatic One. When He Came To India In December 1956 Roberto Rossellini Was An Internationally Renowned Figure. Highly Acclaimed As A Director Of Italian Neo-Realist Films And Married To Hollywood Legend Ingrid Bergman, His Was An Ebullient Yet Intense Personality That Combined A Fondness For Flashy Cars And Lovely Women With A Passionately Serious Commitment To Exploring The Human Condition And Portraying It With Unflinching And Unvarnished Honesty. Rossellini Had Come To India At The Invitation Of The Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. His Aim Was To Make A Series Of Films Which Would Capture The Newly Independent Country As It Came To Grips With Progress And Development After Centuries Of Colonialism. He Deliberately Eschewed The Exotica Which Had Beguiled All Too Many Western Travellers. He Refused To Be Distracted By The Monuments, The Spirituality And Cultural Bric-A-Brac, Preferring Instead To Fix His Gaze On The Actual Moment, On The Grand Endeavours Of Industrialization, Land Reform And The Then Still Fledging Democratic Spirit-- The India Of Nehru S Vision. India Changed Rossellini Irrevocably. It Was Here That He Encountered The Dusky, Doe-Eyed Sonali Dasgupta, Then 27 Years-Old, The Wife Of A Documentary Film-Maker And The Mother Of Two Small Children. Their Connection Scandalized Indian Society And Became The Object Of A Sustained Campaign By Elements In The Indian Press, Instigated By The Bombay Film Industry Which Resented Nehru S Patronage Of A Foreign Film-Maker And Rossellini S Unconcealed Contempt For Their Overblown, Fantastical Extravaganzas. Eminent Journalist Dileep Padgaonkar Enters The World Of India In The 1950S--The Great Political Expectations, The Curious, Interconnected Lives Of The Bombay Elite, The Still Isolated Universe Of Indian Villages--And Traces Rossellini S Passage Through All Of Them. Using Contemporary Reports, Interviews And The Published And Unpublished Reminiscences Of Those Involved In The Drama, He Looks At The Films That Rossellini Made And At Events As They Unfolded To Create A Portrait Of A Remarkable Man Who Fell Under The Spell Of A Woman, A Country And Its People. Under Her Spell Is Spell-Binding...The Personality (Of Rossellini) That Emerges From Dileep Padgaonkar'S Painstakingly Researched Work&Is That Of A Complex, Creatively Restless, Controversial And Often Contradictory Human Being, Who Also Happened To Be A Classic Alpha Male. -Shyam Benegal, Film Director Rossellini Transgressed Every Conceivable Boundary He Was Confronted With - Personal Or Professional. Some Of The Transgressions Were Path-Breaking In His Life And In His Work. Some Others Brought On Meaningless Misery And Disappointment. He Remained A Teacher In Failures, Even. Under Her Spell Is An Engrossing Account Of Magnificent Compulsions. -Mani Kaul, Film Director A Well-Researched And Original Inquiry Into A Key Period Of Rossellini S Evolution Towards A New Kind Of Cinema. Dileep Padgaonkar S Account Of His Passage To India Reads Like A Passionate Novel. -Adriano Aprà, Italian Film Historian The Joy Of Discovery In Rossellini S (Film), India, Is Echoed In This Magnificent Chronicle Of The Italian Director S Incredible Adventures& Dileep Padgaonkar Has Found A Wealth Of New Sources For This Amazing Story. -Tag Gallagher, Author Of The Adventures Of Roberto Rossellini)

National Identity in Indian Popular Cinema, 1947-1987

National Identity in Indian Popular Cinema, 1947-1987 PDF Author: Sumita S. Chakravarty
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 0292789858
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 347

Get Book Here

Book Description
Although Indian popular cinema has a long history and is familiar to audiences around the world, it has rarely been systematically studied. This book offers the first detailed account of the popular film as it has grown and changed during the tumultuous decades of Indian nationhood. The study focuses on the cinema’s characteristic forms, its range of meanings and pleasures, and, above all, its ideological construction of Indian national identity. Informed by theoretical developments in film theory, cultural studies, postcolonial discourse, and “Third World” cinema, the book identifies the major genres and movements within Bombay cinema since Independence and uses them to enter larger cultural debates about questions of identity, authenticity, citizenship, and collectivity. Chakravarty examines numerous films of the period, including Guide (Vijay Anand, 1965), Shri 420 [The gentleman cheat] (Raj Kapoor, 1955), and Bhumika [The role] (Shyam Benegal, 1977). She shows how “imperso-nation,” played out in masquerade and disguise, has characterized the representation of national identity in popular films, so that concerns and conflicts over class, communal, and regional differences are obsessively evoked, explored, and neutralized. These findings will be of interest to film and area specialists, as well as general readers in film studies.