This book proposes an ambitious new framework for understanding the distinctiveness of Indian cinema as a national cinema within a global context dominated by Hollywood.
With its sudden explosions into song-and-dance sequences, half-time intermissions, and heavy traces of censorship, Indian cinema can be identified as a 'cinema of interruptions'. To the uninitiated viewer, raised on the seamless linear plotting of Hollywood narrative, this unfamiliar tendency towards digression may appear random and superfluous. Yet this book argues that such devices assist in the construction of a distinct visual and narrative time-space. In the hands of imaginative directors, the conventions of Indian cinema become opportunities for narrative play and personal expression in such films as Sholay (1975), Nayakan (1987), Parinda (1989) and Hathyar (1981) and Hey Ram! (1999).
Cinema of Interruptions places commercial Indian film within a global system of popular cin- emas, but also points out its engagement with the dominant genre principles implemented by Western film. By focusing on the action-genre work of leading contemporary directors J. P. Dutta, Mani Rutnam and Vidhu Vinod Chopra, a brazen national style is shown to inter- act with international genre films to produce a hybrid form that reworks the gangster film, the western, and the 'avenging woman' genre.
Central to this study is the relationship that Indian cinema shares with its audience, and an understanding of the pleasures it offers the cinephile. In articulating this bond, the book not only presents a fresh framework for understanding popular Indian cinema, but also repre- sents an important new contribution to film genre studies.
Lalitha Gopalan teaches Film Studies at Georgetown University where she is an Assistant Professor in the School of Foreign Service and Department of English.
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