Tamil Cinema

This book examines Tamil cinema, which has recently overtaken Bollywood in terms of annual output, outlining its history and distinctive characteristics, and proceeds to consider a number of important themes such as gender, religion, class, caste, fandom, cinematic genre, the politics of identity and diaspora.

Tamil Cinema in the Twenty-First Century explores the current state of Tamil cinema, one of India’s largest film industries. Since its inception a century ago, Tamil cinema has undergone major transformations, and today it stands as a foremost cultural institution that profoundly shapes Tamil culture and identity. This book investigates the structural, ideological, and societal cleavages that continue to be reproduced, new ideas, modes of representation and narratives that are being created, and the impact of new technologies on Tamil cinema. It advances a critical interdisciplinary approach that challenges the narratives of Tamil cinema to reveal the social forces at work.

Hitherto, the academic study of Indian cinema has focused primarily on Bollywood, despite the fact that the Tamil film industry, based in southern India, has overtaken Bollywood in terms of annual output. This book examines critically the cultural and cinematic representations in Tamil cinema. It outlines its history and distinctive characteristics, and proceeds to consider a number of important themes such as gender, religion, class, caste, fandom, cinematic genre, the politics of identity and diaspora. Throughout, the book cogently links the analysis to wider social, political and cultural phenomena in Tamil and Indian society. Overall, it is an exciting and original contribution to an under-studied field, also facilitating a fresh consideration of the existing body of scholarship on Indian cinema.

Tamil Cinema in the Twenty-First Century explores the current state of Tamil cinema, one of India’s largest film industries. Since its inception a century ago, Tamil cinema has undergone major transformations, and today it stands as a foremost cultural institution that profoundly shapes Tamil culture and identity. This book investigates the structural, ideological, and societal cleavages that continue to be reproduced, new ideas, modes of representation and narratives that are being created, and the impact of new technologies on Tamil cinema. It advances a critical interdisciplinary approach that challenges the narratives of Tamil cinema to reveal the social forces at work.

This is a quintessential book for Cinema buffs and particularly those who are passionate about Tamil cinema, which has the distinction of having played a significant role in history of films in India. Tracing the evolution of Tamil films from the time of pre-independence, when it was anathema for local Congress leaders to be associated with the celluloid, to the arrival of an American, Ellis Dungan, who made masterpieces like Meera, the book showcases vignettes about every important milestone in the vast canvas of Tamil films. In the almost ten decades of its evolution, Tamil cinema has grown to exert a dominant influence on the social and political life of Tamil Nadu in a manner that is unparalleled elsewhere in the world. This seminal volume is an analytical study of Tamil cinema both as an art form and as a socio-political force. Theodore Baskaran traces its history, and presents the achievements of many filmmakers with colourful insights. For the film buff as well as the serious student of film studies, The Eye of the Serpent is a handy reference book on several aspects of Tamil cinema - its character and evolution, the songs and songwriters, filmmakers and script writers, the beginnings of the unique nexus between cinema and politics in Tamil Nadu and much more.

While 'Indian popular cinema', as if by default, has come to mean Bollywood, there are other cinemas in India which are at least as rewarding to study, the largest and perhaps most intriguing among them coming from South India. Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu and Kannada cinemas have their own colourful histories, megastars and political trajectories. This anthology is an attempt to do justice to the bewildering variety there is in the body as a whole and addresses this diversity in the only way deemed possible, which is to open out the study to different approaches, at the same time to get a comprehensive look at South Indian cinema as never before undertaken.