Bombay Talkies, Franz Osten and Varying Discourses in the Early Indian Cinema

This book is a compelling read as it takes the reader through the first four decades of Indian cinema, exploring the habitation of modernity in the discourse surrounding it in its formulating years. One gets to read the analysis of archival gems like the details of film journalism, fan letters, the import of foreign films and film equipment, the segmentation of the film audience and the early debates on censorship, the histories of film studios, and the circulation and exhibition of films in India. Indian as well as European film enthusiasts, historians, and students of film studies would be interested in reading the analysis of films and song sequences based on Gilles Deleuze’s otherwise difficult-to-understand concepts of Movement-Image and Time-Image. This book sketches the history of the operations of Bombay Talkies Studio and the first major collaboration between Indian and European artists like Himansu Rai, Franz Osten, Devika Rani, Niranjan Pal and Josef Wirsching.