A comprehensive overview of Indian art cinema, the book takes a critical look at the work of the major filmmakers of the genre. The eight film directors that form the corpus of this study are Ritwik Ghatak, Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen, Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Shyam Benegal, Govindan Aravindan, Buddhadeb Dasgupta and Govind Nihalani. The works of four other filmmakers - Mani Kaul, Kumar Shahni, Goutam Ghose and Ketan Mehta - who have made films comparable with the best, are discussed in the final chapter. The detailed filmography at the end of the book is a valuable addition for scholars of cinema studies and film aficionados.

The author's analysis of each filmmaker's work is detailed and critical and takes into account the likelihood that many readers will not have seen many of the films examined in this book. The objective of the book is not to decode each film or provide the right answers - only sensitive responses - and to promote an enhanced appreciation of Indian art cinema.

About the Author:

John W. Hood was born in Melbourne in 1944. He studied at the University of Melbourne majoring in Philosophy and Indian Studies. His Ph.D. thesis was on Bengali vernacular historiography specializing in the work of the late Professor Niharranjan Raj. He has also been writing on Indian cinema.

His published books are: Chasing the Truth - The Films of Mrinal Sen (Seagull, 1993); History of the Bengali People, a translation with an introduction of Bangalir Itihas (Orient Longman, 1994); Niharranjan Roy (Sahitya Akademi, 1997); Love and Other Forms of Death: Poem of Buddhadeb Dasgupta (Blackmuse, 1997) and Time and Dreams - The Films of Buddhadeb Dasgupta (Seagull, 1998). He is currently completing a monograph on Oriya cinema and writing a book on representations of women in Indian art cinema.

He now divides his time largely between Melbourne and Calcutta.