Synopses & Reviews
Filming the Gods examines the role and depiction of religion in Indian cinema, showing that the relationship between the modern and the traditional in contemporary India is not exotic, but part of everyday life. Concentrating mainly on the Hindi cinema of Mumbai, Bollywood, it also discusses India's other cinemas.
Rachel Dwyer's lively discussion encompasses the mythological genre which continues India's long tradition of retelling Hindu myths and legends, drawing on sources such as the national epics of the Mahabharata and the Ramayana; the devotional genre, which flourished at the height of the nationalist movement in the 1930s and 40s; and the films made in Bombay that depict India's Islamicate culture, including the historical, the courtesan film and the 'Muslim social' genre. Filming the Gods also examines the presence of the religious across other genres and how cinema represents religious communities and their beliefs and practices. It draws on interviews with film stars, directors and producers as well as popular fiction, fan magazines and the films themselves. As a result, Filming the Gods is a both a guide to the study of film in religious culture as well as a historical overview of Indian religious film.
Synopsis
Filming the Gods explores Indian cinema's portrayal of religion and the gods, from early film-makers' first forays onto the silent screen to the technicolor spectacles of modern Bollywood. Looking at the influential Hindi cinema of Mumbai, as well as at Islamic and other sources, Rachel Dwyer asks how the depiction of divinity and devotion in film has affected India's religious, political and sexual culture. Her exhilarating tale weaves from Indian cinema's founding nationalist impulses, where Hindi epics from the Mahabharata and Ramayana were devised in response to western Biblical films, to the global consumption of Indian film today and its reaction to modern religious tensions such as the war in Kashmir. Exploring genres including epic melodrama, devotional drama and subaltern and social film, the book draws on interviews with film stars, directors and producers as well as popular fiction, fan magazines and of course the films themselves. It succeeds both as a guide to the study of film in religious culture, and a thrilling history of Indian religious film.