This book is a comprehensive anthology comprising essays on women film directors, producers and screenwriters from Bollywood, or the popular Hindi film industry. It derives from the major theories of modernity, postmodern feminism, semiotics, cultural production, and gender performativity in globalized times. The collection transcends the traditional approaches of looking at films made by women filmmakers as ‘feminist’ cinema, and focuses on an extraordinary group of women filmmakers like Ashwini Iyer Tiwari, Bhavani Iyer, Farah Khan, Mira Nair Vijaya Mehta, and Zoya Akthar. The volume will be of interest to academics and theorists of gender and Hindi cinema, as well as anybody interested in contemporary Hindi films in their various manifestations.

What does it mean to be a woman filmmaker in India? One famous director suffered from depression, unable to take on film projects because of her young child. Another was asked in an interview if she drinks and smokes to deal with the stress of filmmaking like men do. Some faced cinematographers who refused to listen to them. Almost all of them struggle to raise money for films with female protagonists. But they are also cool and sassy. One attended film-school with her two-week-old baby. Another stormed the once all-male bastion of the 200-crore club. They can make a hit film about a middle-aged housewife, as much as a bisexual teenager with a disability. F-rated brings together diverse stories of eleven women filmmakers in India: Aparna Sen, Mira Nair, Farah Khan, Meghna Gulzar, Nandita Das, Shonali Bose, Tanuja Chandra, Anjali Menon, Reema Kagti, Kiran Rao and Alankrita Srivastava. A celebration of their womanhood as much as their work - this is a must-read.

This Book Is Perhaphs, The First Modest Attempt By An Indian Film Critic Delve Into The Rather Delicate Subject Of Feminist Film Criticism Within The Framework Of Indian Popular Cinema. The Idea Was Rooted In A Consistent Thrashing Of Ideas And Concepts Attacking The Patriarchal Dominance In Hindi Popular Cinema Through Articles Written In Indian Publications And Papers Presented At Seminars On Cinema Over The Past Two Decades. It Is More Of An Emotional Response To The Portrayal Of Women In Indian Cinema Than A Cerebral And Clinical Analysis Conducted Along The British Schools Of Feminist Film Criticism Based On Psycho-Analysis, Semiology And Structuralism. This Is The Result Of Three Years Of Intensive Research, Through Films, Books And Documentation Consisting Of Archival Material On Indian Cinema.

Until now, there hasn't been one single-volume authoritative reference work on the history of women in film, highlighting nearly every woman filmmaker from the dawn of cinema including Alice Guy (France, 1896), Chantal Akerman (Belgium), Penny Marshall (U.S.), and Sally Potter (U.K.). Every effort has been made to include every kind of woman filmmaker: commercial and mainstream, avant-garde, and minority, and to give a complete cross-section of the work of these remarkable women. Scholars and students of film, popular culture, Women's Studies, and International Studies, as well as film buffs will learn much from this work. The Dictionary covers the careers of nearly 200 women filmmakers, giving vital statistics where available, listings of films directed by these women, and selected bibliographies for further reading. This is a one-volume, one-stop resource, a comprehensive, up-to-date guide that is absolutely essential for any course offering an overview or survey of women's cinema. It offers not only all available statistics, but critical evaluations of the filmmakers' work as well. In order to keep the length manageable, this volume focuses on women who direct fictional narrative films, with occasional forays into the area of the documentary and is limited to film production rather than video production.

This book analyses the role of women in the films of one of the leading filmmakers of the ‘Third World’ in the 1950s, Satyajit Ray, a national icon in filmmaking in India. The book explores the portrayal of women in the context of the creation of national culture after India became independent. Gender issues were very important to India under Jawaharlal Nehru in the 1950s – with the enactment of inheritance and divorce laws. Ray’s portrayal of women and his films anticipate much of the theorizing of later-day feminism. This book analyses cinematic texts with special reference to the women characters using feminist film theory and representation along with a study of the socio-political and economic conditions pertinent to the times – both relevant to the film’s making and its setting. The primary texts studied are films spanning over four decades from Pather Panchali (1955) to his last trilogy and are based on a categorization of the broad feminine ‘types’ represented in the films – based on the socio-political situations in which they are placed – and their relationships with the other characters present. Ray’s portrayal of women has an enormous bearing on our understanding of how modern India evolved in the Nehru era and after, and this book explore just that: the place of the woman as it is and should be in a young nation encumbered by patriarchy. Gendered Modernity and Indian Cinema will be of interest to academics in the field of World cinema, Indian and Bengali cinema, Film Studies as well as Gender Studies and South Asian culture and society.