Hindi cinema was trapped in formulaic cliches for decades: lost-and-found themes, sacrificing mothers, brothers on opposite sides of the law, villains lording over their dens, colourful molls, six songs, the use of rape as a plot pivot, and cops who always arrived too late. It hit an all-time low in the 1980s. Then, in 1991, came liberalization, and a wave of openness and aspiration swept across urban India. Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge was released in 1995 - and Hindi cinema became Bollywood. A new crop of film-makers began to challenge and break away from established rules. Over the next twenty years, a number of Hindi films consistently pushed the envelope in terms of content and technique to create a new kind of cinema. Among other innovations, film-makers came up with ways of crowd funding a film (Ankhon Dekhi), did away with songs if the narrative did not need them (Gangaajal), addressed different sexual preferences (My Brother ... Nikhil) and people with special needs (Black) like no one had ever done before. As film critic with the Indian Express, Shubhra Gupta has stayed the course these twenty years and more and experienced the transition first-hand. In 50 Films That Changed Bollywood, 1995-2015, she looks at the modern classics that have redefined Hindi cinema - from DDLJ and Rangeela to Satya and Dev D to Queen and Bajrangi Bhaijaan. Gupta offers a fascinating glimpse into how these films spoke to their viewers and how the viewers reacted to them - and, ultimately, how they changed us and how we changed them.

This book presents an innovative comparative view of how the issue of adolescent sexuality and consent is differently treated in various media. Analyzing teenage sexual encounters with adults across a variety of media, including films, television, novels, and podcasts, the volume takes a positive stance on the expression of teenage sexuality, while remaining sensitive to the power of adults to abuse and manipulate. The anthology treats these representations as negotiations between conflicting forces: desire, sexual self-knowledge, unequal power, and the law, the latter both actual legal statutes and internalized law in the philosophical and psychoanalytic sense. Questions of unequal power inherent in such relations are theorized. The authors examine variations of this configuration of sexual relations between teenagers and adults from different perspectives, to consider how various forms of expression rework it formally. These essays are attuned to both nuances of presentation and contexts of reception, and they consider how aesthetics play a role. Contributing to the general debate about the ways that societies construct and regulate adolescent sexuality, this book will be of great interest to scholars and students of media studies, cultural studies, film studies, television studies, sociology, and gender studies

An eminent film critic engages Bollywood and beyond in conversation about Irrfan Khan’s art, craft, life and legacy. A spellbinding performer, Irrfan Khan was also a seeker who never stopped honing his skills, each new work a revelation, his oeuvre transformative for Hindi cinema. From his National School of Drama days to his nearly decade-long stint in television and subsequently his arrival in the movies, everyone who watched Irrfan knew they were in the presence of someone special. With his death from an incurable cancer, we lost an actor nonpareil. What is it that gave Irrfan, an ‘outsider’ to Bollywood, his distinction? What has been his contribution to cinema? How does one measure his legacy? Long-time film critic Shubhra Gupta asks these and other probing questions to members of the film fraternity who knew Irrfan, worked with him or observed him closely – Sutapa Sikdar, Shailja Kejriwal, Shyam Benegal, Tigmanshu Dhulia, Vishal Bhardwaj, Naseeruddin Shah, Mira Nair, Konkona Sen Sharma, Anup Singh, Tillotama Shome, Karan Johar, Anurag Kashyap, among several others. As they discuss Irrfan’s films, his craft, and his philosophy as an actor, what emerges is a deeply layered, complex and endlessly absorbing portrait of one of Indian cinema’s most influential artistes. Abuzz with a polyphony of perspectives on the actor and Hindi cinema at large, this is a rich collectible for Irrfan’s admirers and cinephiles alike.

Identity conflicts, a prominent feature of our times, a phenomenon of belonging somewhere yet belonging nowhere, are increasingly finding their way into cinema. This book looks at the representations of identity conflicts in India on the canvas of Indian cinema, connecting them with broader socio-political developments in contemporary India. Starting with the historical background of how political developments in Europe like the emergence of Nation states, secularism, modernity influenced socio-political developments in India in the past century, the book looks at how those developments have shaped modern India. While looking at the cinematic representations of a variety of identity conflicts through the lens of cultural and political analysis, it provides insights into how the construct of an Identity and the inherent conflicts associated with it evolve and manifest themselves through the medium of a film.

Applying postmodern concepts and locating postmodern motifs in key commercial Hindi films, this innovative study reveals how Indian cinema has changed in the 21st century.