An analysis of Bimal Roy’s films and their depiction of people outside the ‘mainstream’ The Cinema of Bimal Roy: An ‘Outsider’ Within examines Roy’s adaptations of Bengali and Hindi literary classics while dwelling on his approach and treatment of women, a focal point of many of his films. It draws attention to his cinema of social relevance—untouchability (Sujata), woman deserted by society and family (Biraj Bou), child marriage (Parineeta) and the inhumanity of oppression and forced urbanization (Do Bigha Zameen). The book goes on to discuss Roy’s ability to bestow new screen identities to established actors such as Nutan, Meena Kumari and Dilip Kumar on one hand and discover new talents such as Sunil Dutt, Sadhana and Tarun Bose on the other. Apart from this, his tutelage introduced many new faces to the film industry—Salil Choudhury, Hrishikesh Mukherjee, Nabendu Ghosh and Gulzar among others. Further, the book details the aesthetics of technique—cinematography, editing and sound—in Roy’s films; his movies had some of the best musical scores in Hindi cinema. It also analyses what made Madhumati his biggest commercial success.

Udayer Pathe, Bimal Roy’s first film, revolutionized Indian cinema. Hailed as a pioneer by Satyajit Ray, he was perhaps the first to bring shades of grey to the black-and-white screen. Roy’s spare storytelling and nuanced understanding of the human condition are reflected in classics like Devdas, Sujata and Madhumati. His ability to illuminate ordinary characters like Shambhu in Do Bigha Zamin and Kalyani in Bandini, is attested to by their being a part of popular memory even to this day. The Man Who Spoke in Pictures is not just a eulogy to this great director, but also an insight into Roy, the man, the director and his art. The auteur’s little-known Bengal phase is chronicled by Mahasweta Devi and Amit Chaudhuri, as well as Tapan Sinha, Amit Bose and other greats of cinema who trace his journey from cinematographer to director. His Bombay years are recorded through a collection of analyses and anecdotes from leading literary and cinematic luminaries, including Nayantara Sahgal, Gulzar, Naseeruddin Shah and Khalid Mohammed. The final section examines Roy from the outsider’s perspective, with articles by Meghnad Desai, Rachel Dwyer and Paula Mayhew.

Contributed write-ups on the works of an Indian film-maker, put together by his daughter, who also wrote three of the chapters

A cinematic masterpiece, Bimal Roy's Madhumati is an enduring classic, and one of the most enduring legacies bequeathed to the Indian film industry by the black-and-white era. Starring the legendary thespians Dilip Kimar, Vyjayanthimala and Pran, Madhumati combined a heartbreaking saga of love with a convincing, spine-chilling ghost story to create an award-winning hit movie which continues to inspire Bollywood even today. In Bimal Roy's Madhumati: Untold Stories from Behind the Scenes, his daughter, Rinki Roy Bhattacharya, explores how Roy's biggest commercial success was made; revisiting shoot locations, meeting people who were involved in its making, building on reminiscences, media reports, interviews and, most importantly, the memories of the three stars-Dilip Kumar, Vyjayantimala and Pran. With a tribute by Amitabh Bachchan, a foreword by Vyjayanthimala and exclusive on-location photographs, this book is a must-have, both for fans of this iconic film and for those interested in the history of the Indian film industry.

Bimal Roy, 1909-1966, Hindi film director; contributed articles.

As a film-maker and film historian, B.D. Garga has closely witnessed and participated in the growth of Indian cinema from the early 1940s. With more than fifty years’ experience as a film journalist, and having served on various national and international film festival juries, he is probably India’s foremost authority on the subject of cinema. In this extraordinary collection of essays, Garga delves into the vast repertoire of his scholarship and experience to provide an insider’s view of Indian and international cinema over the years. Even as he discusses the contribution of men behind the screen—the director, editor, cinematographer—he profiles some of the greatest masters of Indian cinema, like Himansu Rai and P.C. Barua, Bimal Roy and Raj Kapoor, while critically analysing some classic films from the golden era of cinema in India—Devdas (1935) and Sant Tukaram (1936) to Mother India (1957) and Mughal-e-Azam (1960). Embellished with over forty exquisite and vintage photographs from the author’s private collection, The Making of Great Cinema also contains fascinating essays that highlight the contribution of the Soviet masters to international cinema; address important issues like film censorship, sex in Indian films and the relationship between film and politics; and provide a memorable account of the origins of cinema in India and the country’s many cinematic milestones.

This volume points to the limits of models such as regional, national, and transnational, and develops ‘network’ as a conceptual category to study cinemas of India. Through grounded and interdisciplinary research, it shows how film industries located in disparate territories have not functioned as isolated units and draws attention to the industrial traffic – of filmic material, actors, performers, authors, technicians, genres, styles, sounds, expertise, languages, and capital, across trans-regional contexts -- since the inception of cinema. It excavates histories of film production, distribution and exhibition, and their connections beyond regional and national boundaries, and between places, industrial practices, and multiple media. The chapters in this volume address a range of themes such as transgressive female figures; networks of authors and technicians; trans-regional production links and changing technologies, and new media geographies. By tracking manifold changes in the contexts of transforming media, and inter-connections between diverse industrial nodal points, this book expands the critical vocabulary in media and production studies and foregrounds new methods for examining cinema. A generative account of industrial networks, this volume will be useful for scholars and researchers of film studies, cinema studies, media studies, production studies, media sociology, gender studies, South Asian studies, and cultural studies.