Rachel Dwyer is a professor of Indian Cultures and Cinema at SOAS, University of London.
Rachel Dwyer is a professor of Indian Cultures and Cinema at SOAS, University of London.
Dwyer took her BA in Sanskrit at SOAS, followed by an MPhil in General Linguistics and Comparative Philology at the University of Oxford. Her PhD research was on the Gujarati lyrics of Dayaram (1777-1852). She has published several books on Indian cinema. [1] [2]
Hindi cinema, often known as Bollywood and formerly as Bombay cinema, is the Indian Hindi-language film industry based in Mumbai. The term is a portmanteau of "Bombay" and "Hollywood". The industry is related to Cinema of South India and other Indian film industries, making up Indian cinema—the world's largest by number of feature films produced.
Hindustani is the lingua franca of Northern India and Pakistan; known in its literary forms as Hindi–Urdu and historically as Hindui, Hindavi, Zaban-e Hind, Zaban-e Hindustan, Hindustan ki boli, Rekhta, and Hindi. Its regional dialects became known as Zaban-e Dakhani in southern India, Zaban-e Gujari in Gujarat, and as Zaban-e Dehlavi or Urdu around Delhi. It is an Indo-Aryan language, deriving its base primarily from the Western Hindi dialect of Delhi, also known as Khariboli. Hindustani is a pluricentric language, best characterised as a dialect continuum with two standardised registers: Modern Standard Hindi and Modern Standard Urdu. Depending on the social context and geographical area, the language leans towards either side.
Mother India is a 1957 Indian epic drama film, directed by Mehboob Khan and starring Nargis, Sunil Dutt, Rajendra Kumar, and Raaj Kumar. A remake of Khan's earlier film Aurat (1940), it is the story of a poverty-stricken village woman named Radha (Nargis), who in the absence of her husband, struggles to raise her sons and survive against a cunning money-lender amidst many troubles.
The cinema of India consists of films produced in the nation of India. Cinema is immensely popular in India. Every year more than 1800 films get produced in various languages in India. Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Kochi, Bangalore, Bhubaneshwar-Cuttack and Guwahati are the major centres of film production in India. As of 2013, India ranked first in terms of annual film output, followed by Nigeria, Hollywood and China. In 2012, India produced 1,602 feature films. The Indian film industry reached overall revenues of $1.86 billion in 2011. In 2015, India had a total box office gross of US$2.1 billion , the third largest in the world. In 2011, Indian cinema sold over 3.5 billion tickets worldwide, 900,000 more than Hollywood.
Yash Raj Chopra was an Indian film director and film producer who worked in Hindi films. The founding chairman of the film production and distribution company Yash Raj Films, Chopra was the recipient of several awards, including 6 National Film Awards and 08 Filmfare Awards. He is considered among the best Indian filmmakers. For his contributions to film, the Government of India honoured him with the Dadasaheb Phalke Award in 2001, and the Padma Bhushan in 2005. British Academy of Film and Television Arts BAFTA 2006 presented him with a lifetime membership, making him the first Indian to receive the honour.
Bollywood songs, more formally known as Hindi film songs or filmi songs, are songs featured in Bollywood films. Derived from the song-and-dance routines common in Indian films, Bollywood songs, along with dance, are a characteristic motif of Hindi cinema which gives it enduring popular appeal, cultural value and context. Hindi film songs form a predominant component of Indian pop music, and derive their inspiration from both classical and modern sources. Hindi film songs are now firmly embedded in North India's popular culture and routinely encountered in North India in marketplaces, shops, during bus and train journeys and numerous other situations. Though Hindi films routinely contain many songs and some dance routines, they are not musicals in the Western theatrical sense; the music-song-dance aspect is an integral feature of the genre akin to plot, dialogue and other parameters.
Amiya Prosad Sen is a historian with an interest in the intellectual and cultural history of modern India. Currently he is Sivadasani Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies, Oxford (UK). He was previously the Heinrich Zimmer Chair at the South Asia Institute, Heidelberg University. He has served as Professor of Modern Indian History at Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. He has been Agatha Harrison Fellow to the University of Oxford and Visiting Fellow to the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla, and the Centre for Contemporary Studies, Nehru Memorial Museum & Library, New Delhi. During 2007–08, he was Tagore professor at Vishwa Bharati, Shantiniketan.
The Muslim social is a film genre in Hindi cinema that portrays and critiques Islamic culture in India. It flourished in the 1950s and 1960s and lasted till the early 1980s. Muslim socials are divided into two categories: "classic Muslim socials" that explore nawabi culture and focus on upper class or elite Muslim families, and "new wave Muslim socials" that portray middle class Muslim families who experience economic problems, discrimination and communal violence. Muslim socials often include ghazals, qawwalis, Urdu poetry and expressions, and musical forms commonly associated with Islamic culture. However, lately the label has also been criticized for cultural ghettoization of minority cinema. Director M.S. Sathyu who made Garam Hava (1973), called it "a skewed way to look at cinema. When there is no Hindu social or Christian social, how can there be a Muslim social".
Gujarati cinema, informally referred to as Dhollywood or Gollywood, is the Gujarati language film industry. It is one of the major regional and vernacular film industries of the cinema of India, having produced more than one thousand films since its inception.
Nanabhai Bhatt was an Indian film director and producer who worked in Hindi and Gujarati cinema. He is known for making over a hundred fantasy and mythological films, including Mr. X (1957), Zimbo Comes to Town (1960), Lal Qila (1960) and the blockbuster Kangan (1959) starring Nirupa Roy and Ashok Kumar. His first film, Muqabala (1942), was the first to feature the double-role or "twins" phenomenon in Indian cinema, wherein lead actress Fearless Nadia alternated between the good sister and the gangster's moll. The formula was subsequently emulated in numerous Hindi films.
Dayaram (1777–1853) was a Gujarati poet of medieval Gujarati literature and was the last poet of the old Gujarati school. He is known in Gujarati literature for his literary form called Garbi, a lyric song. He was a follower of Pushtimarg of Hindu Vaishnavism. Dayaram, along with Narsinh Mehta and Meera, is considered a major contributor during the Bhakti movement in Gujarati literature.
A bibliography of notable books on Hindi cinema.
Michael James Hutt is Professor of Nepali and Himalayan Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. He is engaged in the study of modern and contemporary Nepali literature, and as a translator. He has also published on Nepali politics, Nepali art and architecture, censorship in the Nepali print media, and the Bhutanese refugee issue.
Shivaji, was a Hindu warrior king and was the founder of the Maratha Empire in India. He has been considered a prominent historical figure in India. A number of films, books, plays and television serials have been produced about his life and about figures associated with him.
Amrit Gangar is an Indian film scholar, historian, critic, curator and writer from Mumbai, Maharashtra, India.
Parsi theatre is a generic term for an influential theatre tradition, staged by Parsis, and theatre companies largely-owned by the Parsi business community, which flourished between 1850 and 1930s. Plays were primarily in the Hindustani language, as well as Gujarati to an extent. After its beginning in Bombay, it soon developed into various travelling theatre companies, which toured across India, especially north and western India, popularizing proscenium-style theatre in regional languages.
Chaturbhuj Doshi (1894–1969) was a Hindi and Gujarati writer-director of Indian cinema. He was one of the top Gujarati screenplay writers, who helped script stories for the Punatar productions. He is stated to be one of the leading figures who launched the Gujarati film industry with work on notable films like Gunsundari (1948) and Nanand Bhojai (1948). Doshi, was “well known” for his family socials and had become “a celebrity in his own right”. He made a name for himself as a journalist initially and was referred to as the "famous journalist" and publicist by Baburao Patel, editor of Filmindia.
M. K. Raghavendra is an Indian film/literary scholar, theorist, critic and writer who had, till 2016, authored six volumes on cinema, and contributed to numerous newspapers and periodicals in India and outside. He received the Swarna Kamal, the National Award for Best Film Critic in 1997.
Francesca Orsini, FBA is an Italian scholar of South Asian literature. She is currently Professor of Hindi and South Asian Literature at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. She previously lectured at the University of Cambridge, before joining SOAS in 2006. For the 2013/2014 academic year, she was Mary I. Bunting Institute Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University.
Yash Chopra is a 2002 biographical book written by the British professor and author Rachel Dwyer, chronicling the life and career of the Indian filmmaker of the same name. The book details his birth in 1932 in Lahore, his career both as a director and producer, and his 1970 marriage to the then-playback singer Pamela, with whom he had two sons Aditya and Uday.
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