About the author
Shanay Jhaveri is Associate Curator, International Modern and Contemporary Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Jhaveri is a graduate from Brown University and holds a Phd from the Royal College of Art, London. At the Met Jhaveri has curated the 2018 Roof Commission Huma Bhabha: We Come in Peace, Phenomenal Nature: Mrinalini Mukherjee (2019), the 2021 Facade Commission Carol Bove: The seances aren't helping and the 2021 Roof Commission Alex Da Corte: As Long As the Sun Lasts. He has organized film programmes at the Tate Modern, Dhaka Art Summit, Light Industry and Film at Lincoln Center. He has published widely in various art journals and his publications include Outsider Films on India:1950-1990 (2009), Western Artists and India: Creative Inspirations in Art and Design (2013), Chandigarh is in India (2016) and America: Films from Elsewhere (2019).
Cinema has always provided a special lens for viewing India and, when combined with an outsider’s perspective, reveals new and often refreshingly significant facets of its culture and society. Beautifully designed with 100 illustrations in color and b/w, this book presents a varied interpretation of the country as well as its relationship with the West through a discussion of ten distinctive films, some documentary and some fictional, spanning 40 years from India’s independence. International critics, artists and scholars have delved deep into this carefully assembled list, from Renoir’s The River and Lang’s The Tiger of Eschnapur to Pasolini’s Notes for a Film on India and Corneau’s Nocturne Indien. Their conversations, reflections and polemics trace the evolution of ideas about India as viewed onscreen, re-assess its cultural development, and, simultaneously, lay bare a meditation on foreignness. Hidden aspects of the films are also brought into unprecedented focus.
2010
- Unlimited digital print
- Softcover
- 300 pages, 7.5 x 6 x 1 in
- 61 color Illustrations
- 39 b/w Illustrations