Behind the Scenes

Aysha Iqbal Viswamohan is Professor in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Madras. Her interests include film studies, drama and popular culture. She has a PhD in American Drama, was the recipient of the Canadian Faculty Enrichment Programme fellowship in 2009 and was attached to Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada. She has published over 30 articles in academic journals of repute, including Cambridge, Oxford, Routledge and SAGE. She edited Postliberalization Indian Novels in English: Politics of Global Reception and Awards (2013). She is the organizer of Imaging Cinema, a popular film workshop (2010–2012 and 2014) at IIT Madras. Vimal Mohan John has a PhD in film studies from the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Madras. He was on an extended fellowship that was awarded to him by the department upon completion of his PhD. His work concerns study of the auteurial practices of film directors and how they mediate gender, cultures and representations. Apart from presenting papers at various national and international conferences, he also publishes academic papers. He teaches as Assistant Professor, Department of English, St. Berchmans College, Kottayam (Kerala).

• Foreword by Rajinder DudrahAcknowledgementsIntroduction by Aysha Iqbal ViswamohanPart I: Cinema of Glamour and Celebration: The Post-Liberalization Bollywood AuteurMain Hoon Farah: The Choreographer as Auteur Ajay GehlawatMansoor Khan: Narrative and Aesthetic Impulses of a Director in ‘Self’ Exile Aysha Iqbal ViswamohanFarhan Akhtar: Stardom of the Poster Boy of ‘New’ Hindi Cinema Aysha Iqbal ViswamohanAditya Chopra’s ‘Glamorous Realism’ Manjunath PendakurAuthorship, Industry, and the Intermedial Relay: The Films of Vidhu Vinod Chopra Sudhir MahadevanRajkumar Hirani: The Outsider Baradwaj RanganSanjay Leela Bhansali: In the Realm of Innovative Cinematic Experiences Varsha PanjwaniPart II: Cinema of Commentaries and Interventions: History, Politics, and Society in BollywoodIn the Morbid Interregnum: Vishal Bhardwaj’s Realist Aesthetic and the Neoliberal Imaginary Jyotsna Kapur and Soumik PalPost-colonial Transgression in Deepa Mehta’s Feminist Quartet Alka KurianSounding Dystopia: Anurag Kashyap’s Films and Relocation of Popular Tropes Madhuja MukherjeeGlobalization, Reflexivity, and Genre in Zoya Akhtar’s films Nandana BoseUrban Dreams: Sudhir Mishra’s Representations of Social and Political Change Pavithra Narayanan and Clare WilkinsonAshutosh Gowariker: Narrativizing the ‘Nation’ Tutun MukherjeMadhur Bhandarkar and the New Bollywood Social Ulka AnjariaPart III: Gendered Cinema: Bollywood’s Women, Gender Politics, and RepresentationFinding Femininity: Homi Adajania and Representations of Urban Womanhood SharanyaGender Politics and Small-town India: The Cinema of Abhishek Chaubey Krupa ShandilyaWomen in the Dark World: Sriram Raghavan and Hindi Film Noir Swetha Sridhar18. ‘There Is No Greater Joy than Telling a Story One Believes In’—Our Brother Onir Nandini BhattacharyaLocation and Agency in Crafting Habib Faisal’s Authorship Auteur Monika MehtaGlossaryFilmographyBibliographyIndex

A well-curated collection of insightful essays celebrating important new voices in contemporary Hindi cinema… [The editors] have embarked on a praiseworthy academic exercise, which chronicles the rise of several exciting new film-makers who have transformed Bollywood in many ways by bravely taking the road not taken.