The Routledge Handbook of South Asian Cinemas is the first collection of original contributions to comprehensively analyze one of the most diverse and prolific cinema-producing regions of the world. It features chapters by up-and-coming and established scholars from a diverse array of academic specialties that survey South Asian cinemas, placing an emphasis on new, emerging, and underexplored cinematic terrains.
The handbook is organized in two parts: Regions and Themes. The first part examines the film industries from a regional perspective, including the cinemas of various Indian languages, in conjunction with the cinemas of other South Asian countries, including Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. The second part examines issues, themes, and practices that cut across regions, including distribution platforms, audiences, song and dance, and gender and sexuality.
A crucial intervention in the field of South Asian Cinema Studies, this handbook is an essential reference work for students and researchers of Asian cinema, film and culture and a significant contribution to South Asian Studies.
Table of Contents:
1. Introduction: Redefining ‘South Asian Cinema’ by Ajay Gehlawat and Jayson Beaster-Jones PART I: REGIONS Bangladesh 2. Women, War and Cinema in Banglades by Elora Halim Chowdhury Bhutan 3. Dreams and Illusions: Contemporary Bhutanese Cinema by Ivan Stacy India 4. Acts of Possession: Gender, Wealth and Spectral Justice in Bengali Cinema by Meheli Sen 5. Anaarkali of Aarah and the Trouble with Being Bhojpuri: Citation and Differentiation in the Formation of Language Industries by Kathryn Hardy 6. Bollywood Cinema by Lucia Krämer 7. The Geopolitics of Kannada Language Cinema by MK Raghavendra 8. Marathi Cinema: Region, Space and Historical Reflexivity by Hrishikesh Ingle 9. Gender, Caste and Queer Interruptions in Punjabi Cinema by Harjant S. Gill 10. Post-Regional Tamil Cinema by Selvaraj Velayutham and Vijay Devadas Nepal 11. The Quest for Maulikta in Nepali cinema by Dikshya Karki Pakistan 12. Martial law and the emergence of a new Pakistani cinema (1970s-1980s) by Syeda Momina Massood 13. Fighters and Monsters in Pakistani Women’s Cinema: Feminocentric Heroism in Urdu and Pashto Genres, 1980s/90s by Esha Niyogi De 14. Constructing Gender in New Pakistani Cinema (2013-2024) by Zebunnisa Hamid Sri Lanka 15. Beyond Conflict in Sri Lankan CInema by Ian Conrich PART II: THEMES Streaming/ Audience/ Politics 16. OTT Services in India by Nandana Bose 17. A Film That Does Not Exist: Tees, Hindutva and the Politics of Streaming by Sarunas Paunksnis 18. Caste In-Visibility: Dalit Representation in Hindi Films and SVOD Content by Runa Chakraborty Paunksnis 19. Story, Sound and Spectacle Signifying Everything: Bollywood and the Indian Diaspora by Anjali Ram 20. ‘Jhoome Jo Pathaan’, the Hook Step and the Political Potential of Virality by Anaar Desai-Stephens Music and Dance by 21. Rhythm and Algorithm: Reality TV, Item numbers and the Poetics of Remix Pallabi Chakravorty 22. Kuchipudi and the Telugu Film Industry by Rumya Putcha 23. Watching Nepali Songs: A Brief History of Music Videos in Nepal by Anna Stirr Gender and Sexuality 24. The Price of Love: The Feminist Heroine of the Bollywood Romantic Comedy by Namrata Rele Sathe 25. Male Sexuality in South Asian Cinema: Sovereign Masculinity and Its Vicissitudes by Baidurya Chakrabarti 26. Malayalam Soft-Porn and Discursive Networks of the ‘Sex-Siren’ by Darshana Sreedhar Mini 27. Conclusion: All the other -ollywoods by Ajay Gehlawat
About the Author :
Ajay Gehlawat is Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies, Theatre and Film at Sonoma State University, USA. He is the author, editor, and co-editor of several studies of popular Hindi cinema.
Jayson Beaster-Jones is Professor of Music at the University of California, Merced, USA. He is the author of several books, including Bollywood Sounds: The Cosmopolitan Mediations of Hindi Film Song (2015).
Review :
"This milestone collection is the first major effort to recognize that Hindi commercial cinema is just one part of a much larger world of nations, languages, cultures and cinematic styles within South Asia. It will be very useful for future cinema scholars, both of this region and of other cinematic worlds, as they zoom in and out of their local contexts and build a genuinely comparative approach to film studies."
Arjun Appadurai, Emeritus Professor of Media, Culture and Communication, New York University
"Crossing both national and linguistic boundaries and spanning a range of media formats, this handbook appropriately decenters the supposed 'Bollywood' hegemon to offer a provocative and critical guide to modern and contemporary developments across the diverse and vibrant cinescapes of South Asia."
Philip A. Lutgendorf, Professor Emeritus, Hindi and Modern Indian Studies, University of Iowa
