Schirmer Encyclopedia of Film

India
the 1970s, the antecedent to the generation of diasporic
filmmakers is Merchant-Ivory Productions—the combined
effort of the producer Ismail Merchant (1936–
2005), from India, the director James Ivory (b. 1928),
from the United States, and the writer Ruth Prawer
Jhabvala (b. 1927), of Polish-German descent, who
together have made films about Indo-British encounters
during and after the mid-1960s using a more or less fixed
ensemble of Indian and British actors. Diasporic cinema
since the late 1980s has focused instead on the experiences
of middle- and working-class immigrants in their
host countries, in particular the ways in which they
negotiate cultural distance from the homeland. The audience
is both the Indian diaspora and the middle class, a
section of which dwells in both domains. Although the
quality of these films varies, some auteurs stand out:
Srinivas Krishna (b. 1913) and Deepa Mehta (b. 1950)
in Canada, Gurinder Chadha (b. 1966) and Hanif
Qureshi (b. 1954) in the United Kingdom, and Mira
Nair (b. 1957) in the United States. Some auteurs
have forged international collaboration around financial
investment, distribution, and even talent. In searching for
their own distinctive aesthetic, some have tried to appropriate
or pay homage to popular cinema by adopting its
most significant insignia, the song and dance sequence,
whereas others have chosen realism, comedy, or lampoon
as their preferred style.
In the twenty-first century, some in Hollywood have
been carefully following the lead taken by diasporic filmmakers
in collaborating with the mainstream Bombay
film industry. Hindi cinema and Hollywood, long functioning
in parallel global markets, have begun to take
stock of the mutual benefits collaboration might bring.
Hollywood is driven by its interest in novelty, lower
production costs, and cheaper talent, the same forces
behind globalization. For the Bombay industry’s new
generation of filmmakers, who since the 1990s have
energetically experimented with commercial cinema, this
presents an opportunity to tie in new sources of international
capital, especially after the spectacular losses the
industry suffered in 2002, and the lure of a crossover
market beyond its domestic and diasporic audience.
However, some Indian filmmakers are keen to win this
market on their own terms, which to them means pre-
serving the charm, romance, and aesthetic of popular
Hindi cinema.
SEE ALSO National Cinema
FURTHER READING
Barnouw, Erik, and S. Krishnaswamy. Indian Film. 2nd ed.
New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1980.
Chakravarty, Sumita. National Identity in Indian Popular
Cinema, 1947–1987. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993.
Creekmur, Corey. ‘‘Picturizing American Cinema: Hindi Film
Songs and the Last Days of Genre.’’ In Soundtrack Included,
edited by Pamela Robertson-Wojick and Arthur Knight.
Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001.
Dwyer, Rachel, and Divya Patel. Cinema India: The Visual
Culture of Hindi Film. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers
University Press, 2002.
Gopalan, Lalitha. Cinema of Interruptions: Action Genres in
Contemporary Indian Cinema. London: British Film Institute,
2002.
Kabir, Nasreen Munni. Guru Dutt: A Life in Cinema. New ed.
New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Mishra, Vijay. Bollywood Cinema: Temples of Desire. New York:
Routledge, 2002.
Nandy, Ashis, ed. The Secret Politics of Our Desires: Innocence,
Culpability, and Indian Popular Cinema. New Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 1998.
Pendakur, Manjunath. Indian Popular Cinema: Industry, Ideology
and Consciousness. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2003.
Prasad, M. Madhava. Ideology of the Hindi Film: A Historical
Construction. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998.
Rajadhyaksha, Ashish, and Paul Willemen. Encyclopedia of Indian
Cinema. Revised ed. New Delhi: Oxford University Press,
1995.
Thomas, Rosie. ‘‘Sanctity and Scandal: The Mythologization of
Mother India,’’ Quarterly Review of Film and Video 11
(1989): 11–30.
Thoraval, Yves. The Cinemas of India (1896–2000). Delhi:
Macmillan India, 2000.
Vasudevan, Ravi, ed. Making Meaning in Indian Cinema. New
Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000.
Virdi, Jyotika. The Cinematic ImagiNation: Indian Popular Films
As Social History. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University
Press, 2003.
Corey K. Creekmur
Jyotika Virdi
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