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Bollywood SuperstarsA Short Story of Indian Cinema

 - Bollywood Superstars
An exploration of the history of Indian cinema from its origins in the late 19th century to the present day: Bollywood Superstars presents the artistic and civilizational richness of the Indian subcontinent (beyond the international success of Bollywood), through its long tradition of image making, and the diversity of the Indian film industry, now the largest in the world.
The power of an iconography or of a holy person is usually conveyed through "'beholding" ("darshan" in Sanskrit, literally "viewing"). The particular import of sight has undoubtedly contributed to placing the visual arts at the heart of Indian society and popular culture to date. The release of a film and the hero worship of actors in India arouses a fervour like nowhere else in the world. During the colonial era of the British Raj, India appropriated the new image technologies as they were invented. In the late 19th century, polychrome series printing and photography looked to the subjects and conventions of painting prior to the advent of animated images. From the 1920s, early films drew their inspiration from mythological subjects and the dramatic style of the popular images produced by the studios of the artist Ravi Varma. A decade later, with talking films, full length musicals with an intermission made their appearance, becoming the dominant genre.
Today, India is the world's leading film producer, with more than 1,500 films a year in around twenty languages exported throughout Asia, the Middle East and Africa. The international success of Bollywood must not conceal the diversity of Indian cinematography. The term "Bollywood" was created in 1970 from the contraction of Bombay and Hollywood, and refers to the predominant production of musicals in Hindi, but Indian cinema is vast and multicultural. Every region has its own production in its regional language: Kollywood in Kodambakkam, for Tamil cinema a mix of comedy, action and emotion—, or Bengali cinema which is more intellectual and social, as reflected in Satyajit Ray's culturally significant oeuvre the opposite of commercial productions.
Published on the occasion of the eponymous exhibition at Louvre Abu Dhabi and Musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac, Paris, en 2023.
Edited by Julien Rousseau et Hélène Kessous.
Texts by Mohamed Khalifa Al Mubarak, Hervé Barbaret, Manuel Rabaté, Emmanuel Kasarhérou, Souraya Noujaim, Amandine D'Azevedo, Swarnavel Eswaran, Hélène Kessous, Eva Markovits, Jeanne Rethacker, Julien Rousseau, Némésis Srour, Selvaraj Velayutham, Ophélie Wiel.

Graphic design: Coline Aguettaz.

Published with Louvre Abu Dhabi, Musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac, France Museums.
 
published in December 2022
English edition
19 x 24 cm (softcover, dust jacket)
176 pages (100 ill.)
 
40.00
 
ISBN : 978-614-8035-52-4
EAN : 9786148035524
 
in stock
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