The Hindi film industry is now arguably the only other major contender with Hollywood in terms of its global popularity and influence. But “Bollywood” films and filmmakers did not see this success in the early stages of their industry’s creation.

In Producing Bollywood: Inside the Contemporary Hindi Film Industry, Tejaswini Ganti, an associate professor in NYU’s Department of Anthropology, explains how it gained prominence by tracing the financial and academic influences on Bollywood’s success.

She posits that Bollywood would not have been possible without neoliberal economic ideals in India, but notes other forces behind Bollywood’s rise. Ganti considers the individual filmmaker’s drive for distinction and greater social acceptance as well as the increasing academic interest and growing international consumption of its films.

Ganti, also a professor in the Tisch School of the Arts’ Department of Cinema Studies, is the author of Bollywood: A Guidebook to Popular Hindi Cinema (Routledge, 2004).