Reel India: Cinema off the Beaten Track

by Namrata Joshi

'Picture abhi baaki hai... '

If there's one experience that unites India, it is cinema. In Reel India, award-winning film critic Namrata Joshi journeys through the interiors of the country intimately chronicling little-known accounts about the nation's incessant obsession with the movies.

In Lucknow, she encounters a Shah Rukh Khan fan who has embraced an alternate reality in which he lives and breathes the star. In Wai, she finds an entire economy fuelled by the film industry as the town transforms into a film set. An activist filmmaker in Odisha demonstrates how he teaches local tribal people the basics of his craft, empowering them to train the spotlight on issues threatening their habitat and livelihood. From the fever pitch of the 'first day first show' in makeshift halls to the rivalries of regional cinema, this is India's immersion in the movies like it's never been seen before.

Filled with real-life stories that are as fascinating as the revelations and insights they offer, Reel India raises the curtain on the starry-eyed dreams and big-screen passions that live on after the final 'cut' is announced.

252 pages, Hardcover

Published July 25, 2019

Reviews

[Diptakirti Chaudhuri]

A delightful, thoughtful, wistful book chronicling the passion for cinema that runs deep and wide in this country. From watching movies in strife-torn Kashmir to the heady charms of Madurai Cinema, from the one-man army of Rima Das shooting delightful films in Assam to Rajasthan's Bishnois chasing Salman Khan for justice.. everything is there. Fans, enthusiasts, duplicates (of stars), collectors from across the country are all there, lovingly featured in this beautiful tapestry of a book.

[Larry Bone · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Reel India" is such an awesome book on so many levels. The pun is such a perfect title because the description of real India in all its various aspects, follows, pretty much right up into the present time. All the "reel" stuff blends so effortlessly with the "real" India that often surrounding it either actually within a film or within the filming of the film. It reads sort of like a health checkup on India. How is Mother India and her people doing? Regarding much of the way it describes India, it brings to mind "India After Gandhi" by stellar historian, Ramchandra Guha. The first chapter concerning Salman Khan's reputation in Jodhpur deals a little with everything including Khan, the Muslim religion, and the new prosperity which now exists within or alongside many of India's villages and rural communities. This book reads a bit like Joan Didion writing about Hollywood by observing how Hollywood affects surrounding communities though film worship in Los Angeles, whose successful "nearer to the beach" suburbanites, are probably more akin to India's urban multiplexers regarding much film as kitsch as Joshi writes. Namrata Joshi doesn't delve quite so much into her own personal feelings like Didion but listens carefully to what others say in a very precise way which makes both of them great journalists and Reel India such an awesome book about Hindi films and India or how both are sometimes tied so closely together in a sometimes very beneficial way.

[Chitra Ahanthem · Rating 4 out of 5]

If there is something that I love as much as reading books, it is watching good cinema regardless of language: shorts, documentaries, series and full length feature films. So it goes without saying that book on cinema is not something I am going to miss out on at all.

This book is not so much about the technicalities of film making as it is about the passion it evokes in people across the country: the aspirations that cinema present to people in small towns and villages across the country. It has amusing anecdotes and narratives on fans of major Hindi film stars certainly but also features an array of interesting film initiatives that are being taken up to take cinema to people who do not even have electricity. The author takes the reader along in her journey to nondescript towns and villages: Wai in Maharashtra where people have a steady income as film locations and 'extras', the old dilapidated houses in Lucknow which has new life breathing in them as film sets, Madurai's film trajectory through it's gang violence and so on.

This book has certainly taken me to the by lanes of various places across the country through a medium that I love to connect with people:Films!

[Pari · Rating 4 out of 5]

How far and wide Indian Cinema influences the lives of the masses is impressively narrated by the author in this absolutely delightful book called 'Reel India'!

What was happening once and how new changes are altering that landscape, the origin, rise and the fall, varied perception on this popular phenomenon, the passion behind it and it's mark on the smallest of towns, regional and sub - regional cinema and identity... it was amazing to know so much about it! Plus, the cover art is attractive and reflects the book well!