One of India’s best-loved film directors, Hrishikesh Mukherjee is perhaps best known today for his perennially popular creations like Anand, Chupke Chupke and Gol Maal. But Hrishi-da’s best work was provocative, wide-ranging and always aware of the complexities of people and their relationships. Often combining breezy narratives with serious ideas, his films created a distinct world with recurring themes. Jai Arjun Singh looks closely at Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s oeuvre, from well-known films like Satyakam, Guddi, Abhimaan and Khubsoorat to lesser known works such as Mem-Didi, Biwi aur Makaan and Anuradha. Combining a fan’s passion with a critic’s rigour, The World of Hrishikesh Mukherjee is a must-read for anyone who takes their filmed entertainment seriously.

Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s films have brought immense joy to generations of film lovers, and a new generation is now being impressed by his works, thanks to the many repeated telecasts on various channels of his classic comedies such as Gol Maal and Chupke Chupke among others. This book is about the forty-two films that were directed by Hrishikesh Mukherjee and how his vision of humans is as important as that of his mentor, Bimal Roy. The book is both a fan’s perspective and a complete listing of all the released films of Mukherjee from 1957 till 1998.

Personal. Intimate. Deeply moving. An absolutely unputdownable memoir. Do memories ever fade away? They never 'dry up', says Gulzar Saab, 'They keep floating somewhere between the conscious and the subconscious mind. It's a great feeling to swim there sometime. Pick up a few bubbly moments and cherish them again.' From Bimal Roy to Satyajit Ray, R.D. Burman, Kishore Kumar, Ritwik Ghatak, Hrishikesh Mukherjee, Pandit Ravi Shankar, Pandit Bhimsen Joshi, Mahasweta Devi and Samaresh Basu, among others, in this fascinating book, Gulzar Saab goes down memory lane to bring to light his relationship with the doyens of cinema, music and literature, who he had known and worked with over a long period of time. In his words, 'It seems like a dream when I revisit my memories of such great gurus and colleagues, and I feel overwhelmed that I have really interacted with them. I have to pinch myself on realizing that actually . . . I met them.' Chatty, anecdotal and deeply personal, this book of memories will chronicle Gulzar Saab's life and career through different eras of Indian cinema as he successfully transcended commercial and critical arts. Studded with rare photographs, Actually .. I Met Them will be a treat for his huge and devoted fan base.

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.

A Biography Of The Legendary Hindi Movie Director Of Yore.

Incomparable Sachin Dev Burman is a personal and in depth overview of the all time great music maestro SD Burman. Hardly a situation goes by when one does not see a reference to "SDB" or "SD Burman" or "Sachin Karta" when Hindi film music or modern Bengali songs are discussed. He was part of the DNA of these genres. What began in the early thirties of the last century continues to draw attention even today as his music had an allure and flavour that remains unprecedented. He was an institution ... as a composer, as a singer. Here was a master who also drew out the best from his singers, lyricists and instrumentalists and helped them excel in their craft. Dhaka-based author HQ Chowdhury, offers a full fledged story of the composer-singer SD Burman covering his successes, failures, idiosyncrasies and what peers thought of him. A Special Foreword written by Santoor maestro Padma Vibhushan Pandit Shiv Kumar Sharma and an Introduction by Film Music Historian Manek Premchand lend valuable added perspectives to the remarkable personality and genius of SD Burman. Painstakingly meticulous and accurate, this biography of music maestro SD Burman is written with incredible thoroughness by HQ Chowdhury. It chronicles his family background, childhood, early days in Comilla and Calcutta, his amazing passion for music of the rustic hinterland and his rigorous training under his gurus. His work in the world of Hindi film music, his association with his singers, lyricists, fellow composers and stars and filmmakers is detailed with indepth research, archival material and the author's own personal interactions with the people who worked with the maestro. In the world of Hindi film music, he was popularly known as the music composer SD Burman or Burman Dada. But in West Bengal and Bangladesh he was an all-time great singer, Sachin Karta or Sachindev. The book traverses the two musical worlds of Sachin Dev Burman - one as a composer and the other, as a singer - and makes it available in a language common to all. Burman Dada's thoughts and beliefs, successes and failures, his innocence and penchant for perfection, and his style of working - all come through in the detailed descriptions, facts, analyses, interviews and anecdotes, collected and written by HQ Chowdhury. The complete and detailed Discography lists all the songs Burman Dada has sung or given music for in Bengali and Hindi. Along with a collection of rare pictures this book will serve as a great resource of students of modern Bengali songs, Hindi film songs and vintage Bollywood films. About HQ Chowdhury HQ Chowdhury is a freelance writer on music and films. He first wrote in the late 1960s for the People, an English daily from Dhaka and then for a while in the early 1970s for Cine Advance, published from Kolkata and Mumbai. He is a recipient of the 2006 'Sachin Dev Burman Award' from the Government of Tripura, India. HQ Chowdhury is the CEO of Plasma Plus, an application laboratory of science and technology of which he is also the founder. He was listed in the Marquis WHO's WHO in the World of Professionals from 1997 to 2002.

From starry-eyed fans with dreams of fame to cotton entrepreneurs turned movie moguls, the Bombay film industry has historically energized a range of practices and practitioners, playing a crucial and compelling role in the life of modern India. Bombay Hustle presents an ambitious history of Indian cinema as a history of material practice, bringing new insights to studies of media, modernity, and the late colonial city. Drawing on original archival research and an innovative transdisciplinary approach, Debashree Mukherjee offers a panoramic portrait of the consolidation of the Bombay film industry during the talkie transition of the 1920s–1940s. In the decades leading up to independence in 1947, Bombay became synonymous with marketplace thrills, industrial strikes, and modernist experimentation. Its burgeoning film industry embodied Bombay’s spirit of “hustle,” gathering together and spewing out the many different energies and emotions that characterized the city. Bombay Hustle examines diverse sites of film production—finance, pre-production paperwork, casting, screenwriting, acting, stunts—to show how speculative excitement jostled against desires for scientific management in an industry premised on the struggle between contingency and control. Mukherjee develops the concept of a “cine-ecology” in order to examine the bodies, technologies, and environments that collectively shaped the production and circulation of cinematic meaning in this time. The book thus brings into view a range of marginalized film workers, their labor and experiences; forgotten film studios, their technical practices and aesthetic visions; and overlooked connections among media practices, geographical particularities, and historical exigencies.

Leela Naidu was listed as one of the five most beautiful women in the world by Vogue magazine. But she was much more than that. She was the fine-boned, haunting face in Hrishikesh Mukherjee's Anuradha, in Merchant-Ivorys The Householder and in Shyam Benegal's Trikaal. She was the woman who refused to sign Raj Kapoor's films four times, and the actor who asked for a script long before the phrase bound script became Bollywood clich. Jean Renoir taught her acting and Salvador Dali used her as a model for a Madonna. Leela was married, the mother of twins and divorced before she was twenty. Later, she was Dom Moraess muse, his unpaid secretary, his best friend and, when he was interviewing Indira Gandhi, his translator (interpreting his mumbling questions). Through this time she also edited magazines and dubbed Hong Kong action movies, was Kumar Shahani's first producer, and when JRD Tata wanted a film on how to use the washroom on a plane, she made it for him. A Patchwork Life is a memoir that is charming, idiosyncratic and a window to a world of Chopin, red elephants, lampshades made of human skin, moss gardens and much more: a world where a naked Russian count turns up in a French garden, plush hotels offer porcupine quills as toothpicks and an assistant director sends his female lead an inflatable rubber bra. Leela's life was about staying in the moment. Everyone who met her has a Leela Naidu story. This is her version.

With reference to India.

A rare compilation of hand-printed as well as digitalized landmark Hindi film posters from the 1930s to the present - both tracing the journey of an art form and the evolution of cinema in India. The text accompanying each poster carries a synopsis, banner, details of cast and technical crew, date of release, famous songs, awards won, and some lesser-known anecdotes about the film. The posters are from young Hindi film buff, S M M Ausaja's personal collection of posters, lobby cards, record album covers and other memorabilia.