Author: Jasbir Jain
Sudha Rai/
Editor: Jasbir Jain and Sudha Rai
Publisher: Rawat Publications
Year: 2002
Language: English
Pages: 280
ISBN/UPC (if available): 8170337135
Description
Films and Feminism: Essays in Indian Cinema explores both mainstream and parallel cinema for an analysis of the woman image, the idea of romance, the imposition and defiance of patriarchal order and a woman’s journey towards self-definition.
Films reach a wider audience than literature as they move across the barriers of class, literacy, religion and even language. Not only do they reflect reality, they also construct reality. Their reach and impact makes it imperative to work through the rhetoric and melodrama of the medium to unearth the subtleties and ambiguities which lie within.
Film technique has both borrowed from and contributed to literary aesthetics. The twenty-four essays in the present volume, written by scholars of literature, sociology, philosophy, political science, history and film-making highlight these interconnections. Largely focusing on Hindi cinema, the essays reflect a representation of Bengali and Kannada cinema as well.
The volume makes a significant contribution to film, gender and literary studies as it opens up multiple dimensions of inquiry.
Contents
Introduction
Rituparno Ghosh: The Woman’s Director of Bangla Cinema
Saffronizing the Silver Screen: The Right-Wringed Nineties Film
Female Bodies and the Male Gaze: Laura Mulvey and Hindi Cinema
Courting: Hindi Film Ishtyle
Women in Indian Cinema: Fictional Constructs
Bollywood Portrayals of Women With Disabilities
Muslim Women’s Identity: On the Margins of the Nation
Towards the Radicalization of the Indian Family
Crossing the Boundaries: Woman in Search of Self
Body as Text: Women Transgressors and Hindi Cinema
The Working Woman in Three Bengali Films: A Retrospect
Comedy and Gender: A Study of Katha and Chashme Baddoor
Questioning the Confines of Marriages: Khushboo and Arth
Symbolism and Space in Aparna Sen’s Paroma and Deepa Mehta’s Fire
Breaking the Silence: Gender, Caste and Transgression in Phaniyamma and Bandh Jharokhe
Journey into the Mind of a Woman: From Rajni to Mashaal
Maternal Enthrallment in Satyajit Ray’s Aparajito and Devi
The Mythical Text of Woman’s Re-presentation in Cinema:
The Image-icon Interface in Devi
Tamanna: Desiring the Undesired
From Victimhood to Potential Threat: Rape and patriarchy in Damini
Mirch Masala : Film with a Purpose
Spatial Contours in Zubeida
Battling for Being: Manjrekar’s Astitva
Locating Perception and paradoxes Within an Image: Manjrekar’s Astitva
Contributors
Index