>Can anyone suggest readings (books, articles, monographs, theses) on >Indian Cinema with particular reference to Popular Cinema?

The Encyclopedia of Indian Cinema, edited by Ashish Rajadhyaksha and now in a second edition, is very useful.  It includes a good range from art directors like Ghatak, Kaul and Sen to schlocky Hollywood rip-offs.  There's good if brief info on individual films as well as directors, composers, actors and singers.

I've been looking forward to Nikhat Kazmi's Dream Merchants of Bollywood but it's been checked out of our library since arriving.  If I remember right (& it's been a few years) Eric Barnouw's Indian Film was a decent overview up to sometime in the late 70s when the revised edition came out.  There's also a pretty decent book that has short essays on 100 classic films but I can't remember the title offhand.

If you're covering popular cinema, it's definitely worth checking some of the magazines (and numerous related websites) to get a feel for the intensity of Indian fan culture.  And for a really unusual slant check out the chapters in Pete Tombs' Mondo Macabro, which is not only accurate and well-researched but quite entertaining.

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