Bollywood's India: Hindi cinema as a guide to modern India
Key information
- Date
- Time
-
5:30 pm to 7:00 pm
- Venue
- Brunei Gallery
- Room
- Lecture Theatre
About this event
Professor Rachel Dwyer
Chair: Professor Christopher Pinney, University College, London
Professor Paul Webley, Director and Principal of SOAS, will preside.
In her inaugural lecture, Professor Rachel Dwyer will discuss interpretations of India through Bollywood cinema.
Bollywood is a term which has come to mean a specific kind of Hindi cinema, namely the popular or commercial films that emanate from Mumbai/Bombay. It is both a national and transnational form, a globalised cinema that is one of the few serious rivals to Hollywood. Hindi cinema is pure entertainment, presented in a melodramatic mode, projecting glamorous fantasies, and is justly famed for its song and dance sequences, hence is an unlikely candidate as a reliable guide to modern India. However it is a unique repository of India’s public imaginary, and of how the country sees itself today and in the future. This richly illustrated talk examines Hindi cinema’s view of a modern, ‘new’, India and how it interprets the country’s colonial and postcolonial history.
Organiser: SOAS
Contact email: mo2@soas.ac.uk
Contact Tel: 0207 898 4075
Contact Fax: 0207 898 4469