Bengali Cinema: An Other Nation

Bengali Cinema is the first comprehensive book on the shifting political and social awareness through which cinematic imagination and film culture have evolved in Bengal. But it also supplies intriguing clues to the psychological and cultural strands that have defined the distinctiveness of the indian filmic imagination, as a whole, It is work that will have a lasting impact. Ashis Nandy, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, New Delhi

Sharmistha Gooptu demonstrates the great virtues to be gained by exploring the history of cinema in its social, political and cultural contexts. She brings the Bengali cinema to life, reveals the important place which it occupied in local culture(s) and throws light on the complex relationship between regional and national identities in India. Her book is a fascinating read.

David Washbrook, University of Cambridge

Covering the years spanning cinema's emergence as a popular form in Bengal in the first half of the twentieth century, this book examines the main genres and trends produced by this cinema, and leads up to Bengali cinema's last phase of transition in the 1980s. Arguing that Bengali cinema has been a key economic and social institution, the author emphasizes that the Bengali filmic imaginary existed over and above the imaginary of the Indian nation.

This book argues that a definitive history of Bengali cinema presents an alternative understanding to the currently influential notion of the Hindi film as the `Indian' or `national' cinema. It suggests that the Bengali cinema presents a history that brings to the fore the deeply contested terrain of `national' cinema, and shows the creation of the `alternative imaginary' of the Bengali film. The author indicates that the case of the Bengali cinema demonstrates the emergence of a public domain that set up a definitive discourse of difference with respect to the `all-India' Hindi film, popularly classified as Bollywood cinema, and which pre-empted its subsumption within the more pervasive culture of the Bombay Hindi cinema. As the first comprehensive historical work on Bengali cinema, this book makes a significant contribution to both Film and Cultural Studies and South Asian Studies in general.

Sharmistha Gooptu has a Ph.D. in History from the University of Chicago. She is a founder and managing trustee of the South Asia Research Foundation (SARF), a not-for-profit research body based in India. SARF's current project involves the creation of what will be the largest South Asian digital database of historical materials. Gooptu is also the joint editor of the journal South Asian History and Culture (Routledge) and the Routledge South Asian History and Culture book series. She is Adjunct Lecturer, University of South Australia.