Producing Bollywood

"Tejaswini Ganti mines her extensive contacts in an industry generally closed-off to outsiders to provide us with in-depth analyses of the sensibilities, compulsions, and desires of important figures in the film industry, as well as the social practices of film production. Producing Bollywood provides unique insights into the forces that shape the production of films in one of the largest film industries in the world. By going beyond the hype surrounding 'Bollywood' and eschewing simplistic dismissals about escapism and the profit-making drive of Bollywood filmmakers, this book enables us to understand the cultural logics that shape the production of Bollywood film. Based on more than a decade of ethnographic fieldwork in multiple sites of film production, Producing Bollywood is truly a trailblazing work."—Purnima Mankekar, author of Screening Culture, Viewing Politics: An Ethnography of Television, Womanhood, and Nation in Postcolonial India

"This is the first book on Bollywood to combine a deep knowledge of the dynamics of script, song, stars, and style in this cinematic world with an equally keen sense of the unique nature of the politics, finance, and cultural prejudices of the film industry. It will be an indispensable benchmark for all future studies of Bollywood and of similar cinematic industries worldwide, and it will interest media scholars, anthropologists, sociologists of culture, and the curious general reader."—Arjun Appadurai, New York University

“In Producing Bollywood, the first truly comprehensive ethnographic account of the Mumbai-based film industry, Tejaswini Ganti crafts an ode to an India in deep transition, via the multifaceted lenses of a glamorized and iconic subsection of its Hindi-language filmmakers and actors. . . . [A] landmark study.”

“Producing Bollywood is a lucidly written and thoroughly researched ethnography of a film industry whose products are deeply interwoven in the ordinary life and politics of hundreds of millions of people.”

“[O]ffers extraordinary insight into the production processes of the late 1990s…. [T]he thoroughness and comprehensive review of trends in this book must be highly commended.”

“The book is rich in anthropological and historical data, theoretically astute, accessible, and great fun to read. It is a must for anyone interested in Bollywood or other film industries, and for scholars interested in the effects of neoliberalism and globalization in India. Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers.”

“Producing Bollywood is a riveting read. It draws carefully thought out connections between cultural formations, changing discourses of legitimacy and nation building. It is to Ganti’s credit that she is able to bring rigorous ethnographic tools to bear upon fieldwork materials put together over a decade and more.... Overall, this is a timely and much needed insight into the intersections of the political economy of production, consumption and legitimization of mass cultural products. It should interest readers and students of Mass Media, Film Studies, Culture Studies, South Asia, Anthropology and Ethnography.”

“The book may be useful to anyone interested in sociology, anthropology, cinema, media, communication, cultural studies, development studies and other interdisciplinary fields. The book is indispensable for those who still use the terms Hindi cinema and Bollywood interchangeably and find it unproblematic.”

“Tejaswini Ganti’s Producing Bollywood is perhaps the most comprehensive and in-depth account of the Hindi film industry to date...Despite being 440 pages in length, Ganti’s accessible writing style makes this ethnography a joy to read.”

“Filled with first-hand accounts of the inner workings of the vast Mumbai-based Bollywood film industry collected through numerous interviews and extraordinarily extensive fieldwork undertaken over the course of more than a decade of research, Producing Bollywood meets a previously unfilled need on the part of those engaged in studying Indian cinema and culture by letting a large part of this varied and diverse industry speak, as it were, for itself.”

“Ganti’s book is a commendable pioneering initiative. It will be useful for students, researchers, and those interested in South Asian film studies.”