Islamicate Cultures of Bombay Cinema

By Richard Allen and Ira Bhaskar
(Tulika Books, 2009)

      Islamicate Cultures of Bombay Cinema was written in conjunction with the first-of-its-kind film festival of the same name recently held in Abu Dhabi, which explored the rich influence of Muslim culture and traditions on the cinema of Bombay (now Mumbai) from the 1930s to present. The co-authors, Richard Allen, professor and chair of the Department of Cinema Studies at the Tisch School of the Arts, and Ira Bhaskar, associate professor of Cinema Studies at the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, were also the co-organizers of the groundbreaking film festival.
       According to Allen and Bhaskar, these cultures are imagined forms of the past and therefore a contested site of histories and identities. Yet they also form a culturally potent and aesthetically fertile reservoir of images and idioms through which Muslim communities are represented and represent themselves. Islamicate influences inform the language, poetry, music, ideas, and even the characteristic emotional responses elicited by Bombay cinema. However, the authors argue that it is in the three genre forms of Muslim historical, courtesan, and social films that these cultures are concentrated and distilled into precise iconographic, performative, and narrative idioms. Furthermore, the authors argue that it is through these three genres, and their critical re-working by New Wave filmmakers, that social and historical significance is attributed to Muslim cultures.