Bollywood Cinema Temple of desire - Vijay Mishref

Sumita Chakravarty, author of National Identity in Indian Popular Cinema

"Vijay Mishra's book is a precious one and a rare achievement. He has managed to combine an appreciation of the deeply personal and sensual nature of cinematic experience with the intellectual rigor and erudition of an experienced scholar. He offers us a skillful and sensitive analysis of Indian cinema refracted through the lens of diaspora expe-rience. He shows us how Bollywood cinema is implicated in the constitution of subjectivities, the politics of intimacy, and the intimate appeals of pernicious religious nationalism. It will be an inspiration to all who share an interest in the aesthetics and politics of popular Indian cinema." Marie Gillespie, author of

Television, Ethnicity and Cultural Change

).

ndia is home to Bollywood and to the largest film industry in the world. Movie theaters are said to be the "temples of modern India, with Bombay/Mumbai--the center of Bollywood--producing some 200 of the 800 films per year that are viewed by roughly eleven million people per day. In Bollywood Cinema, Vijay Mishra argues that Indian film production and reception is shaped by the desire for national community and a pan-Indian popular culture. Seeking to understand Bollywood according to its own narrative and aesthetic principles and in relation to a global film industry, he views Indian cinema through the dual methodologies of postcolonial studies and film theory. Mishra discusses classic and recent films--linking their form and content to broader issues of national identity, epic tradition, popular culture, history, and the implications of diaspora. Persuasively arguing for the centrality of movie-going in the construction of self and community, Bollywood Cinema is an indispensable guide to Indian cinema for both scholars and fans alike.