Art Cinema and India's Forgotten Futures: Film and History in the Postcolony

Rochona Majumdar's book explores Indian art cinema's pioneering role in shaping postcolonial thought. She argues that filmmakers and film societies sought to foster a new cinematic culture for the new nation, but their works captured the unresolvable contradictions of the postcolonial present, pointing toward possible yet unrealized futures.

Format: Hardback
Length: 320 pages
Publication date: 12 October 2021
Publisher: Columbia University Press

The project of Indian art cinema, which began in the years following India's independence in 1947, evoked the global reach of the term "art film" and spoke to the aspirations of the new nation-state. In this pioneering book, Rochona Majumdar examines key works of Indian art cinema to demonstrate how film emerged as a mode of doing history and that, in so doing, it anticipated some of the most influential insights of postcolonial thought. Majumdar details how filmmakers, as well as a host of film societies and publications, sought to foster a new cinematic culture for the new nation, fueled by enthusiasm for a future of progress and development. Good films would help make good citizens: art cinema would not only earn global prestige but also shape discerning individuals capable of exercising aesthetic and political judgment.

During the 1960s, however, Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen, and Ritwik Ghatak, the leading figures of Indian art cinema, became disillusioned with the belief that film was integral to national development. Instead, Majumdar contends, their works captured the unresolvable contradictions of the postcolonial present, which pointed toward possible, yet unrealized futures. Analyzing the films of Ray, Sen, and Ghatak, and working through previously unexplored archives of film society publications, Majumdar offers a radical reinterpretation of Indian film history.

Art Cinema and India's Forgotten Futures offers sweeping new insights into the relationship between films and the postcolonial condition and its role in decolonial imaginations. It challenges the conventional understanding of art cinema as a form of escapism and instead demonstrates how it can be used to explore the complexities of the postcolonial experience. The book also offers a critical analysis of the ways in which Indian art cinema has been influenced by global cinema and explores the ways in which it has resisted or subverted these influences.

Overall, Art Cinema and India's Forgotten Futures is a groundbreaking work that will be of interest to scholars and students of film and cultural studies, as well as anyone with an interest in the history and future of India.

Dimension: 235 x 156 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780231201049