Islamicate Cultures of Bombay Cinema (Tulika Books) (original) (raw)

Is Islamicate a Genre? Looking at Popular Muslim Films through the Lens of Genre

This essay engages with genre as a theory and how it can be used as a framework to determine whether Islamicate or the Muslim films can be called a genre by themselves, simply by their engagement with and representation of the Muslim culture or practice. This has been done drawing upon the influence of Hollywood in genre theory and arguments surrounding the feasibility / possibility of categorizing Hindi cinema in similar terms. The essay engages with films representing Muslim culture, and how they feed into the audience's desires to be offered a window into another world (whether it is the past or the inner world behind the purdah). It will conclude by trying to ascertain whether the Islamicate films fall outside the categories of melodrama (which is the most prominent and an umbrella genre that is represented in Indian cinema) and forms a genre by itself or does the Islamicate form a sub-category within melodrama.

Film genres, the Muslim Social, and discourses of identity, c.1935-1945

Bioscope: South Asian Screen Studies, 2015

This paper analyses discussions about Indian film genres taking place in the trade press, and in film critical discourse, taking the periodical filmindia and left-wing film critic KA Abbas as a reference point. In counterpoint to a wider field of fantasy films drawing upon Arabian nights. dastaan and legendary romance stories, such as Laila Majnu and Shireen Farhad, and historicals such as Pukar and Humayun and arguably engaging audiences across ethnic-religious groups, there emerged a Muslim Social genre, projecting contemporary Muslim life. The article looks at the politics of its emergence in relationship to inter-communal dynamics, including the Pakistan demand of 1940, and Hindu cultural criticism and mobilization.

‘Islam’ As New Genre

2015

The revival of Islam in the political discourse in Indonesia after the collapse of new order period implicated in the adoption of Islamic way of life of people in every day life. This situation has brought to the production of movies containing Islamic values. The movies were successful in attracting audience and triggered the same movies produced. The emergence of special movies with Islamic content for religious marketplace-at this context, for Muslim audience-has created a new genre in movie industry during the post new order in Indonesia. As a new genre, Islamic movies were made with their generic convention, including structural codes and patterns, which build the movie texts, such as iconography, characterization, setting, dialogue type, and narration. This paper will identify and analyze what and how the generic convention consisted in Islamic movies within Indonesian context. By using genre analyses proposed by Thwaites et. al (1994), this paper will explore the structure of...

Islamicate Cultures of Bombay Cinema

Manager of the Preservation Unit at the NFAI for granting us access to archive prints. We are also grateful to the National Film Development Corporation for giving us access to their prints of Mammo and Salim Langde pe Mat Ro. Special thanks go to Urmila Joshi, Chief Librarian at the NFAI, for her invaluable and timely help with research materials and references and for responding instantly to pho^e re(luests for clarifications even as the book was going to press. We would also like to thank Lakshmi lyer and Arti Karkhanis for furnishing film stills. We thank Aruna Arora, Librarian at the School of Arts and Aesthetics, JNU, for her instant responses on requests for books and materials, and making sure that we had what we needed. We would like to thank Kavita Singh for giving us references on Mughal art, and Najaf Haider for stimulating discussions and responding to requests for clarifications. Indira Chandrasekhar at Tulika Books has been an inspiration to work with. Enthusiastically supportive of this book from the very beginning, she has worked round the clock on the editing, formating, photographs and proofs, and it is due to her that you hold this beautiful book in your hands. We would also like to thank Rani Ray for her work on editing and proofing the text. We are extremely grateful to Ravinder Singh for his prompt responses and wonderful work to produce most of the stills in this book. Thanks are also due to Ravinder Randhawa for his work on the stills, and to Swara Bhaskar and Ravinder Randhawa for their untiring work to create and obtain the film prints from which a number of the stills were made. Swara Bhaskar also worked on the proofs, the glossary and the credits of the films, and we would like to thank her for her work.

Visualizing Islamic Law and Values in Semerah Padi (1956): P. Ramlee as Cinematographic Auteur

In film studies, the Auteur Theory is mainly employed to explore film directors’ signature styles in creating their mastery artifacts. Individual style of a director in film making is based on his/her preferences; genre, theme, mise-en-scéne, cinematography or even casts line-up. Grounded by American auteur scholar, Andrew Sarris’s idea of ‘how’ in style and techniques a director conveys ‘what’ in film storytelling, this paper looks at P. Ramlee’s cinematographic style in expressing Islamic notion in his 1956 film, Semerah Padi. Qualitative content analysis was conducted on the film in order to identify P. Ramlee’s cinematographic tendencies and by taking up a semiotics approach; the researcher interpreted and discussed his distinctive style as an auteur statured filmmaker.

Portraying Islamic Values in 'Bisik Pada Langit' and 'Adiwiraku Films

MIMBAR : Jurnal Sosial dan Pembangunan

Not much attention has been given to Islamic films produced in Malaysia. However, the role to spread dakwah through media is an obligation. In the effort to vary the medium of da’wah, a film is seen as an influential way that can be explored as film can be an interesting tool/medium to spread da’wah, rather than through the conventional preaching, books, magazine and others. To understand the role of film in spreading the da’wah, the researchers reviewed two different films produced which are; Bisik Pada Langit (2017) and Adiwiraku (2017). For the analysis purpose, a set of coding sheet is created to record the film plot. The storyline of each film was analysed quantitatively using content analysis method to determine the frequencies of Islamic values emerged in these films. As a result, this article introduces themes that can visualise the Islamic values as appeared in non-Islamic films. These themes can illustrate how the Islamic values have been portrayed in those films which eve...