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Sirens of Modernity: World Cinema via Bombay
A free open access ebook is available upon publication. Learn more at www.luminosoa.org.

By the 1960s, Hindi-language films from Bombay were in high demand not only for domestic and diasporic audiences but also for sizable non-diasporic audiences across Eastern Europe, Central Asia, the Middle East, and the Indian Ocean world. Often confounding critics who painted the song-dance films as noisy and nonsensical. if not dangerously seductive and utterly vulgar, Bombay films attracted fervent worldwide viewers precisely for their elements of romance, music, and spectacle. In this richly documented history of Hindi cinema during the long 1960s, Samhita Sunya historicizes the emergence of world cinema as a category of cinematic diplomacy that formed in the crucible of the Cold War. Interwoven with this history is an account of the prolific transnational circuits of popular Hindi films alongside the efflorescence of European art cinema and Cold War–era forays of Hollywood abroad. By following archival leads and threads of argumentation within commercial Hindi films that seem to be odd cases—flops, remakes, low-budget comedies, and prestige productions—this book offers a novel map for excavating the historical and ethical stakes of world cinema and world-making via Bombay.
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Sirens of Modernity: World Cinema via Bombay
A free open access ebook is available upon publication. Learn more at www.luminosoa.org.

By the 1960s, Hindi-language films from Bombay were in high demand not only for domestic and diasporic audiences but also for sizable non-diasporic audiences across Eastern Europe, Central Asia, the Middle East, and the Indian Ocean world. Often confounding critics who painted the song-dance films as noisy and nonsensical. if not dangerously seductive and utterly vulgar, Bombay films attracted fervent worldwide viewers precisely for their elements of romance, music, and spectacle. In this richly documented history of Hindi cinema during the long 1960s, Samhita Sunya historicizes the emergence of world cinema as a category of cinematic diplomacy that formed in the crucible of the Cold War. Interwoven with this history is an account of the prolific transnational circuits of popular Hindi films alongside the efflorescence of European art cinema and Cold War–era forays of Hollywood abroad. By following archival leads and threads of argumentation within commercial Hindi films that seem to be odd cases—flops, remakes, low-budget comedies, and prestige productions—this book offers a novel map for excavating the historical and ethical stakes of world cinema and world-making via Bombay.
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Sirens of Modernity: World Cinema via Bombay

Sirens of Modernity: World Cinema via Bombay

by Samhita Sunya
Sirens of Modernity: World Cinema via Bombay

Sirens of Modernity: World Cinema via Bombay

by Samhita Sunya

Overview

A free open access ebook is available upon publication. Learn more at www.luminosoa.org.

By the 1960s, Hindi-language films from Bombay were in high demand not only for domestic and diasporic audiences but also for sizable non-diasporic audiences across Eastern Europe, Central Asia, the Middle East, and the Indian Ocean world. Often confounding critics who painted the song-dance films as noisy and nonsensical. if not dangerously seductive and utterly vulgar, Bombay films attracted fervent worldwide viewers precisely for their elements of romance, music, and spectacle. In this richly documented history of Hindi cinema during the long 1960s, Samhita Sunya historicizes the emergence of world cinema as a category of cinematic diplomacy that formed in the crucible of the Cold War. Interwoven with this history is an account of the prolific transnational circuits of popular Hindi films alongside the efflorescence of European art cinema and Cold War–era forays of Hollywood abroad. By following archival leads and threads of argumentation within commercial Hindi films that seem to be odd cases—flops, remakes, low-budget comedies, and prestige productions—this book offers a novel map for excavating the historical and ethical stakes of world cinema and world-making via Bombay.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780520379534
Publisher: University of California Press
Publication date: 07/26/2022
Series: Cinema Cultures in Contact , #3
Edition description: First Edition
Pages: 270
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Samhita Sunya is Assistant Professor of Cinema in the Department of Middle Eastern and South Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Virginia.

 

Table of Contents

Opening Credits

"Akira Kurosawa": A Retrospective Prologue 1

Introduction: "Romance, Comedy, and Somewhat Jazzy Music" 11

Part 1 Establishing Shots: World Cinema in Tongues

1 Problems of Translation: World Cinema as Distribution History 31

2 Moving toward the "City of Love": Hindustani Lyrical Genealogies 50

Part 2 Star-Crossed Overtures: Cinephilia in Excess

3 Homosocialist Coproductions: Pardesi (1957) contra Singapore (1960) 87

4 Comedic Crossovers and Madras Money-Spinners: Padosan's (1968) Audiovisual Apparatus 123

5 Foreign Exchanges: Transregional Trafficking through Subah-O-Sham (1972) 168

Acknowledgments 207

Notes 211

Bibliography 235

Index 253

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