From starry-eyed fans with dreams of fame to cotton entrepreneurs turned movie moguls, the Bombay film industry has historically energized a range of practices and practitioners, playing a crucial and compelling role in the life of modern India. Bombay Hustle presents an ambitious history of Indian cinema as a history of material practice, bringing new insights to studies of media, modernity, and the late colonial city.
Drawing on original archival research and an innovative transdisciplinary approach, Debashree Mukherjee offers a panoramic portrait of the consolidation of the Bombay film industry during the talkie transition of the 1920s–1940s. In the decades leading up to independence in 1947, Bombay became synonymous with marketplace thrills, industrial strikes, and modernist experimentation. Its burgeoning film industry embodied Bombay’s spirit of “hustle,” gathering together and spewing out the many different energies and emotions that characterized the city. Bombay Hustle examines diverse sites of film production—finance, pre-production paperwork, casting, screenwriting, acting, stunts—to show how speculative excitement jostled against desires for scientific management in an industry premised on the struggle between contingency and control. Mukherjee develops the concept of a “cine-ecology” in order to examine the bodies, technologies, and environments that collectively shaped the production and circulation of cinematic meaning in this time. The book thus brings into view a range of marginalized film workers, their labor and experiences; forgotten film studios, their technical practices and aesthetic visions; and overlooked connections among media practices, geographical particularities, and historical exigencies.
"In viewing cinema “as an ecology of practices and practitioners” Debashree Mukherjee’s Bombay Hustle – Making Movies in a Colonial City provides a significant and timely contribution to our understanding of how these apparently disparate forces mesh together to form what she describes as a cine-ecology, distinct from the more imprecise ‘film industry’." - The Wire
"Bombay Hustle goes beyond film criticism and film history to contribute to urban history as well. It is a well-researched, well-written work of history weaving together elements of gender, class, caste, and aesthetics to situation the 1930s as a period that deserves more attention from film enthusiasts and scholars alike." - Asian Review of Books
"Bombay Hustle offers a key intervention in histories of infrastructure and film production. This intervention extends beyond the particularity of South Asia and applies to any major cine-ecology." - Journal of Cinema and Media Studies
"The book’s transdisciplinary approach to the film industry and the film workers allows it to forge new connections and meanings in the study of media practices in colonial Bombay." - Film Matters
"[This] book will garner the attention of and engage scholars from many subfi elds: history of cinema, popular culture, biomedia studies, and urban history. This book presents new modes of watching cinema and seeing the city through its material and human histories." - Economic & Political Weekly
"With Lennonesque poetic charm, Mukherjee’s intimate tryst with this enthralling world of multiple entwined imaginations opens new windows, and persuades its readers: ‘Imagine, there’s more to see’." - South Asia Research
"This book should be a must-read for scholars of South Asian cinema and cultural studies." - Pacific Affairs
Формат: Скан PDf
Drawing on original archival research and an innovative transdisciplinary approach, Debashree Mukherjee offers a panoramic portrait of the consolidation of the Bombay film industry during the talkie transition of the 1920s–1940s. In the decades leading up to independence in 1947, Bombay became synonymous with marketplace thrills, industrial strikes, and modernist experimentation. Its burgeoning film industry embodied Bombay’s spirit of “hustle,” gathering together and spewing out the many different energies and emotions that characterized the city. Bombay Hustle examines diverse sites of film production—finance, pre-production paperwork, casting, screenwriting, acting, stunts—to show how speculative excitement jostled against desires for scientific management in an industry premised on the struggle between contingency and control. Mukherjee develops the concept of a “cine-ecology” in order to examine the bodies, technologies, and environments that collectively shaped the production and circulation of cinematic meaning in this time. The book thus brings into view a range of marginalized film workers, their labor and experiences; forgotten film studios, their technical practices and aesthetic visions; and overlooked connections among media practices, geographical particularities, and historical exigencies.
"In viewing cinema “as an ecology of practices and practitioners” Debashree Mukherjee’s Bombay Hustle – Making Movies in a Colonial City provides a significant and timely contribution to our understanding of how these apparently disparate forces mesh together to form what she describes as a cine-ecology, distinct from the more imprecise ‘film industry’." - The Wire
"Bombay Hustle goes beyond film criticism and film history to contribute to urban history as well. It is a well-researched, well-written work of history weaving together elements of gender, class, caste, and aesthetics to situation the 1930s as a period that deserves more attention from film enthusiasts and scholars alike." - Asian Review of Books
"Bombay Hustle offers a key intervention in histories of infrastructure and film production. This intervention extends beyond the particularity of South Asia and applies to any major cine-ecology." - Journal of Cinema and Media Studies
"The book’s transdisciplinary approach to the film industry and the film workers allows it to forge new connections and meanings in the study of media practices in colonial Bombay." - Film Matters
"[This] book will garner the attention of and engage scholars from many subfi elds: history of cinema, popular culture, biomedia studies, and urban history. This book presents new modes of watching cinema and seeing the city through its material and human histories." - Economic & Political Weekly
"With Lennonesque poetic charm, Mukherjee’s intimate tryst with this enthralling world of multiple entwined imaginations opens new windows, and persuades its readers: ‘Imagine, there’s more to see’." - South Asia Research
"This book should be a must-read for scholars of South Asian cinema and cultural studies." - Pacific Affairs
Формат: Скан PDf
https://www.yakaboo.ua/ua/bombay-hustle-making-movies-in-a-colonial-city.html