Leave Disco Dancer Alone! Indian Cinema and Soviet Movie-going after Stalin

by Sudha Rajagopalan

In this important book, Sudha Rajagopalan explores the consumption of Indian popular cinema in post – Stalinist Soviet society. In doing so, she highlights the enthusiastic response Indian popular films and their stars received from the Soviet audience, as well as the discursive and institutional context in which this consumption occurred from the mid-fifties till the end of the Soviet era in 1991.Drawing on oral history methodology and archival research in Russia, the author analyses the ways in which Soviet movie-goers, policy makers, critics, and sociologists responded to, interpreted and debated Indian cinema in the Soviet Union between 1954 and the end of the eighties. . this engaging book is also the first monograph on Indian cinema abroad non-diasporic audiences, is a must-read not only for students and scholars of film history ad cultural studies, but every such lay reader who has grown up on a regular diet of popular Indian cinema.

292 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2008

Reviews

[M. Nur · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very edifying and fascinating book that gives you a deep and comprehensive view of the popularity and impact of Indian popular films in the Soviet Union. This is not a light, pop-history read; it is very much an academic analysis that moves beyond simple exclamations on positive reception to dissect the multitude of receptions that greeted the presence of Indian popular films in Soviet theaters, the effect these films had on Soviet society and the relationship between Soviet citizens and the Soviet state, and the geopolitical considerations that allowed them such a wide and uncontested entry. A must read for anyone interested in serious scholarship on Indian cinema.