World Film Locations: Mumbai (Book)

Mumbai is a megalopolis of dramatic diversity and heartbreaking extremes, with wealthy areas located just steps away from the searing poverty of its huge slums. The home of Bollywood, Mumbai is also the epicentre of India’s film industry and its foremost film location. Through the lens of Mumbai’s manifold cinematic representations, World Film Locations: Mumbai explores the sheer complexity of this incomparable city.

Edition

Fascinating, incommensurable and chaotic, Mumbai is a megalopolis of dramatic diversity and heartbreaking extremes, where immense wealth is just steps away from the searing poverty of its huge slums. The home of Bollywood, Mumbai is also the epicentre of India’s film industry and its foremost film location. Through the lens of Mumbai’s manifold cinematic representations, World Film Locations: Mumbai explores the sheer complexity of this incomparable city.

This volume comprises insightful essays and beautifully illustrated scene analyses by leading scholars and film critics who explore the ways filmmakers from India and abroad have represented Mumbai’s astonishing urban and human landscape. Their contributions show how movies have created in the imaginations of billions of spectators the vivid image of a city that constantly tempts people to escape their dreary existence and offers them a chance to fulfil their dreams. The first book to focus on cinematic representations of what is perhaps the world’s most-filmed city, World Film Locations: Mumbai will be necessary reading for scholars and film buffs alike.

Helio San Miguel teaches film at the New School for Social Research in New York City.

Maps/Scenes

Scenes 1-8 1948 - 1966

Scenes 9-16 1970 - 1978

Scenes 17-24 1979 - 1989

Scenes 25-32 1989 - 2000

Scenes 33-39 2001 - 2008

Scenes 40-46 2008 - 2010

Essays

Mumbai: City of the Imagination – Helio San Miguel

Bollywood: The Thousand Flavours of the Cinema of Mumbai – Alberto Elena

Victoria Terminus: Gateway of India’s Dreams – Mayank Shekhar

Counter-Bollywood: Realist Fables from the City of Dreams – Nandini Ramnath

Mumbai Noir: An Uncanny Present – Ranjani Mazumdar

Bombay, Post 6 December 1992: Space and Time of Communalism – Lalitha Gopalan

Bollywood Dynasties: Star Power and Lineage in Mumbai’s Film Aristocracy – Devrath Sagar

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