Lahore Cinema

Commercial cinema has been among the most powerful vectors of social and aesthetic modernization in South Asia. So argues Iftikhar Dadi in his provocative examination of cinema produced between 1956 and 1969—the long sixties—in Lahore, Pakistan, following the 1947 Partition of South Asia. These film...

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Main Author: Dadi, Iftikhar
Format: Online
Language:English
Published: University of Washington Press 2023
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Online Access:OCN: 1337409770
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author Dadi, Iftikhar
author_browse Dadi, Iftikhar
author_facet Dadi, Iftikhar
author_sort Dadi, Iftikhar
collection Directory of Open Access Books
description Commercial cinema has been among the most powerful vectors of social and aesthetic modernization in South Asia. So argues Iftikhar Dadi in his provocative examination of cinema produced between 1956 and 1969—the long sixties—in Lahore, Pakistan, following the 1947 Partition of South Asia. These films drew freely from Bengali performance traditions, Hindu mythology, Parsi theater, Sufi conceptions of the self, Urdu lyric poetry, and Hollywood musicals, bringing these traditions into dialogue with melodrama and neorealism. Examining this layered context offers insights into a period of rapid modernization and into cultural affiliation in the South Asian present, when frameworks of multiplicity and plurality are in jeopardy. Lahore Cinema probes the role of language, rhetoric, lyric, and form in the making of cinematic meaning as well as the relevance of the Urdu cultural universe to midcentury Bombay filmmaking. Challenging the assumption of popular cinema as apolitical, Dadi explores how films allowed their audiences to navigate an accelerating modernity and tense politics by anchoring social change across the terrain of deeper cultural imaginaries. By constituting publics beyond social divides of regional, ethnic, and sectarian affiliations, commercial cinema played an influential progressive role during the mid- and later twentieth century in South Asia. Lahore Cinema is freely available in an open access edition thanks to TOME (Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem) and the generous support of Cornell University. DOI: 10.6069/9780295750804
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spelling doab-20.500.12854ir-1127632025-03-20T12:53:31Z Lahore Cinema Dadi, Iftikhar Film history, theory and criticism;Asian history Commercial cinema has been among the most powerful vectors of social and aesthetic modernization in South Asia. So argues Iftikhar Dadi in his provocative examination of cinema produced between 1956 and 1969—the long sixties—in Lahore, Pakistan, following the 1947 Partition of South Asia. These films drew freely from Bengali performance traditions, Hindu mythology, Parsi theater, Sufi conceptions of the self, Urdu lyric poetry, and Hollywood musicals, bringing these traditions into dialogue with melodrama and neorealism. Examining this layered context offers insights into a period of rapid modernization and into cultural affiliation in the South Asian present, when frameworks of multiplicity and plurality are in jeopardy. Lahore Cinema probes the role of language, rhetoric, lyric, and form in the making of cinematic meaning as well as the relevance of the Urdu cultural universe to midcentury Bombay filmmaking. Challenging the assumption of popular cinema as apolitical, Dadi explores how films allowed their audiences to navigate an accelerating modernity and tense politics by anchoring social change across the terrain of deeper cultural imaginaries. By constituting publics beyond social divides of regional, ethnic, and sectarian affiliations, commercial cinema played an influential progressive role during the mid- and later twentieth century in South Asia. Lahore Cinema is freely available in an open access edition thanks to TOME (Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem) and the generous support of Cornell University. DOI: 10.6069/9780295750804 2023-08-17T04:03:11Z 2023-08-17T04:03:11Z 2023-08-16T08:13:11Z 2022 book OCN: 1337409770 https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/75535 9780295750798 9780295750811 https://directory.doabooks.org/handle/20.500.12854/112763 eng Global South Asia open access image/png image/png image/png image/jpeg Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/20.500.12657/75535/2/9780295750804.epub https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/20.500.12657/75535/2/9780295750804.epub https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/20.500.12657/75535/2/9780295750804.epub https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/20.500.12657/75535/1/9780295750804.pdf University of Washington Press 10.6069/9780295750804 10.6069/9780295750804 05b43d6c-b025-4c47-9778-32ac09131cc4 Cornell University 9780295750798 9780295750811 Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem (TOME) 266 Seattle TOME open access
spellingShingle Film history, theory and criticism;Asian history
Dadi, Iftikhar
Lahore Cinema
title Lahore Cinema
title_full Lahore Cinema
title_fullStr Lahore Cinema
title_full_unstemmed Lahore Cinema
title_short Lahore Cinema
title_sort lahore cinema
topic Film history, theory and criticism;Asian history
topic_facet Film history, theory and criticism;Asian history
url OCN: 1337409770
work_keys_str_mv AT dadiiftikhar lahorecinema