Bollywood FAQ

Bollywood, a popular nomenclature for India's “national” film industry in the Hindi language, along with the Taj Mahal, yoga, Buddha, and Mahatma Gandhi, is one of the best-known introductions and universally recognised associations with India across the world today. Despite its predominant narrative styles not conforming to the First World European and/or American cinema structure, Indian cinema is increasingly viewed as the world's second-most important film industry, after Hollywood, with box-office influence crossing over with European cinema.

Bollywood FAQ provides a thrilling, entertaining, and intellectually stimulating joy ride into the vibrant, colourful, and multi-emotional universe of the world's most prolific (over 30,000 film titles) and most-watched film industry (at 3 billion-plus ticket sales). Bollywood blockbusters are simultaneously screened in theatres and cinemas in over 100 nations, from the USA to Japan, New Zealand to the Netherlands, and Peru to Pakistan. Every major Hollywood studio (Warner Bros., Fox Star, Disney, Sony Pictures, and Viacom 18) is now making or distributing Bollywood films.

Yet much of Indian cinema continues to amuse and confuse audiences and critics outside of India, including during their first/occasional introductions to its, in the words of Salman Rushdie, “epico-mythico-tragico-comico-super-sexy-high-masala-art form in which the unifying principle is a techni-colour-storyline.”

Bollywood FAQ explains and explores the above myths and magic. It introduces India's maharajah-like stars and their cult-commanding stardom. Movie buffs will find a ready reckoner on iconic Bollywood films, with a bonus must-watch listing of the cinema's most spectacular song-and-dance moments, highlighting the pleasures and popularity of a national cinema that has come to be a genre in itself.

This book is a reader-friendly reference to everything one has ever wanted to know about the spectacular, robust, humongous, colourful, and dramatic multi-generic cinematic being called Bollywood. The narrative is enriched with insider insights culled from its author's long career as a film writer and critic in the city of Bollywood, Bombay (now Mumbai).