The specific, targeted readership for the The Routledge Companion to World Cinema is a dual readership of scholars and students. We carefully selected and arranged the range of subjects and the expert contributors to ensure that the volume would be attractive to all levels of academia and when that didn’t work we asked our mates.
Joke!
Luckily our mates are all experts in World cinema so we only had to ask once.
Indeed, they all got right away that making a valuable reference work for introductory undergraduate level courses required a solid grounding in contemporary debate and a range of comparative analyses that would suit the more eclectic, ‘catch-all’ modules offered to large numbers of students in first and second years of study.
Departments of Film Studies would be an obvious market, but the range of topics meant that the volume would (we hoped) also be of interest to departments of Modern and European Languages, where Film Studies is often housed, as well as Departments of English, Drama, History of Art, Sociology and History where there is often a film component to the degree schemes and, indeed, to the research profiles and interests of the academics in these departments. At the same time, we intended that The Routledge Companion to World Cinema would also provide in-depth, original and provocative readings of the kind sought by final year students, particularly those engaged in the production of dissertations.
And then there was the wider audience and readership of anyone and everyone interested in the evolution and current condition of World cinema.
We were going to have to hit a lot of targets with just one bullet!
Luckily, The Routledge Companion to World Cinema will be published in hardback for the international library market and the articles we hope that it will be sufficiently cutting edge to inspire requests for library copies. In addition, the publication of the paperback edition 18-24 months later should ensure its dissemination and take-up by a wide market, ranging from individual scholars and film fans, to academic and general interest libraries.
So, no pressure.
To alleviate the stress somewhat, all academic contributors were requested and encouraged to write in an accessible manner, limiting jargon and dissecting theoretical concepts in a way that would make them understandable.
Which is kinda like asking a snake to tap dance.
But most of our contributors managed it, including Madhuja Mukherjee, who we invited to write on Indian cinema. Madhuja is an Associate Professor who teaches in the Department of Film Studies at Jadavpur University in Kolkata. She has published widely on the Indian film industry, technology and aesthetics, as well as on archiving and art projects. Lately, she has published on the soundscape of Indian films. She is the author of New Theatres Ltd., The Emblem of Art, The Picture of Success (2009) and has edited anthologies titled Aural Films, Oral Cultures (2012) and Voices and Verses of the Talking Stars. She has also published her graphic-novel Kangal Malsat (in Bengali) in 2013 and her feature film Carnival (2012) was premiered at the International Film Festival in Rotterdam in 2012.
This is the trailer for her film.
And this is the abstract for her chapter.
The Forking Paths of Indian Cinemas
This chapter presents an introduction to the founding years of Indian cinemas along with the critical approaches, which have framed such historical events. It especially draws attention to the material, which shows how colonial India was regularly exposed to American films and a range of widely held American and European popular forms. Therefore, on one hand, the chapter refers to the cosmopolitanism of Indian cinemas; on the other, it illustrates how Hindi language cinema was produced from both East and West Indian centres (Kolkata and Pune) and thus had an exciting eclectic structure. Moreover, the industry was divided in terms of its economics as well the economy of culture until the end of Second World War when the studio system became weak, and centres like Kolkata suffered heavily due to war, riots and partition (during 1947).
It is around this time that Bombay (Mumbai) was refigured as the principal site of Hindi film production, and the all-encompassing melodramatic mode – or the ‘socials’- became acceptable. Thus, while exploring the forking paths of Indian cinemas, this chapter focuses on the dialogues between what eventually became mainstream popular Hindi cinema and its multiple ‘Others’. It tackles the complexities of regional film industries, especially the Bengali film industry, which worked in tandem from the early years. Briefly, this chapter highlights the fluidity of industrial structures, and examines the manner in which Bombay cinema(s) has re-emerged as a powerful global phenomenon (that is ‘Bollywood’) even when it remains connected to a plethora of cheaply produced ‘B-movies’, different genres, and sub-regionals video/digital films produced in many dialects.
Indian cinemas, plural. We were learning something wonderful and new every day.