Bollywood and the First Decade of Independence

This book focuses on the cinema of the 1950s in India and analyzes the work of seven filmmakers from mainstream Hindi cinema and how they responded to the independent Indian nation after 1947.

The selection of key filmmakers instead of cinema in general shows individual trajectories within cinema. The book examines the change in preoccupations or representations in the work of a single filmmaker, followed by an interpretation about the meaning of those representations. The filmmakers were very prolific and their work was commercially successful. Each chapter studies five or six selected films of each filmmaker and also include some relevant biographical details. The book demonstrates that each filmmaker uses their own strategies to address independent India of the 1950s and how Hindu cinema interrogated the nation-state.

A novel contribution to Indian cinema, especially Hindi cinema, during formative years of the 1950s, this book will be of interest to researchers in Film Studies, Gender Studies, Political Science, and History, as well as South Asian society and culture.