Description

Indian cinema is now famous in the west, where ‘Bollywood’ is now widely used to mean any form of cinema from India. This talk focuses on ‘Bollywood’ meaning the mainstream Hindi cinema made in Bombay (Mumbai), mostly in the post-1991 period, as it examines the role it plays in the South Asian diaspora, the depictions of this diaspora and the impact of the diaspora on the film industry itself. The talk is illustrated with many subtitled clips.

Rachel Dwyer is a leading expert on India and Professor of Indian Culture and Cinema at SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies), University of London. She is fluent in both Hindi and Gujarati, and has several critically acclaimed books including One Hundred Bollywood Films and Yash Chopra. Along with writing an acclaimed book on director Yash Chopra she has also worked closely with him, and has had several of her publications launched, not only by him, but also by Bollywood powerhouses Amitabh Bachchan, Dilip Kumar and Shahrukh Khan. Currently, she is the editor of two book series on South Asian cinema: one with Oxford University Press, Delhi, the other with Indiana University Press. She is also a sought after lecturer, having delivered influential talks in a wide range of venues. She has, for example, recently spoken on Raj Kapoor for the British Film Institute’s Key Scholars in Film Studies Seminar Series at King’s College London, on “Islamicate or Islamophobic?: Muslims in Hindi Cinema,” at Brown University, and on the “Hindi Film Biopic and the New Indian Cinema” at the University of Sidney. Dwyer has to two exciting new forthcoming publications: Bollywood’s India: Hindi Cinema as a Guide to Modern India, and, The Cultural History of the Indian Elephant.

Celebrating the Asian Heritage Month