Talking Films

One of the great thinkers of Indian cinema, Javed Akhtar needs no introduction. As a screenplay writer, he and Salim Khan wrote the dialogue for blockbusters like Zanjeer, Deewar, and Sholay; as a songwriter, he has composed a huge variety of songs including, ‘Yeh kahaan aa gaye hum’, ‘Kuchh na kaho’, and ‘Kal ha na ho’. Talking Films and Songs showcases both these aspects of Javed Akhtar’s versatile genius, through freewheeling conversations with Nasreen Munni Kabir. Originally published in 1999 (Talking Films) and 2005 (Talking Songs), these extremely popular books have delighted readers, researchers, and scholars of Indian film. Full of wit and wisdom, this edition is a must-read for Hindi cinema enthusiasts.

Silent films were, of course, never silent at all. However, the sound that used to accompany the screen picture in the early days of cinema has been neglected as an area of study. Altman explores the various musical, narrative, and even synchronized sound systems that enriched cinema before Jolson spoke.

Poet, lyricist and screenplay writer, Javed Akhtar is that rare individual celebrated in the diverse worlds of popular cinema and of literature and letters. Zanjeer, Deewaar and Sholay, with screenplays written by him in partnership with Salim Khan, are milestones in the history of Indian cinema. Javed Akhtar's book of poetry, Tarkash, published both in Urdu and Hindi, has enjoyed enormous critical as well as commercial success. The songs he has written for the Hindi screen have also been trendsetters, and today Javed Akhtar is among the most respected names in the Indian film industry. Here, Nasreen Munni Kabir talks with this hugely creative writer about his early influences, his relationship with his parents, his life and work in films where he began as a clapper boy in the mid-sixties, and his successful partnership with Salim Khan. An original thinker, Javed Akhtar turns his analytical gaze to the conventions of Hindi cinema, its songs and its stories. He is illuminating about many aspects of screenplay, dialogue writing and lyric writing, bringing alive his understanding of these creative forms with his descriptions of the way well-known film dialogue and famous songs canme to be written. Akhtar speaks with clarity and honesty about his development as a poet and his growth as a politically-aware person. Sparkling with Akhtar's wit, intelligence and skill as a raconteur, this well-illustrated book will appeal to everyone interested in cinema and the arts.

This text offers readers a look at the time when sound was a vexing challenge for filmmakers and the source of contentious debate for audiences and critics. The author presents a view of the talkies' reception, amongst other issues.

Presents India's greatest film-maker on the art and craft of films. Speaking of Films brings together some of Ray's most memorable writings on film and film-making. With the masterly precision and clarity that characterize his films, Ray discusses a wide array of subjects: the structure and language of cinema with special reference to his adaptations of Tagore and Bibhuti Bhushan Bandopadhyay, the appropriate use of background music and dialogue in films, the relationship between a film-maker and a film critic, and important developments in cinema like the advent of sound and colour. He also writes about his own experiences, the challenges of working with rank amateurs, and the innovations called for when making a film in the face of technological, financial and logistical constraints. In the process, Ray provides fascinating behind-the-scenes glimpses of the people who worked with him - the intricacies of getting Chhabi Biswas, who had no ear for music, to play a patron of classical music in Jalsaghar, the incredible memory of the seventy-five-year-old Chunibala Devi, Indir Thakrun of Pather Panchali, and her remarkable attention to details.

Refocus: The Films of Amy Heckerling is the first book-length study of the work of Amy Heckerling, the phenomenally popular director and screenwriter of Clueless and Fast Times at Ridgemont High. As such, the book constitutes a significant intervention in Film Studies, prompting a reconsideration of the importance of Heckerling both in the development of Teen cinema, and as a figure in Hollywood comedy. As part of the Refocus series, the volume brings together outstanding original essays examining Heckerling's work from a variety of perspectives, including film, television and cultural studies and is destined to be used widely in undergraduate teaching.

In 1929 and 1930, during the Hollywood studios' conversion to synchronized-sound film production, white-controlled trade magazines and African American newspapers celebrated a "vogue" for "Negro films." "Hollywood's African American Films" argues that the movie business turned to black musical performance to both resolve technological and aesthetic problems introduced by the medium of "talking pictures" and, at the same time, to appeal to the white "Broadway" audience that patronized their most lucrative first-run theaters. Capitalizing on highbrow associations with white "slumming" in African American cabarets and on the cultural linkage between popular black musical styles and "natural" acoustics, studios produced a series of African American-cast and white-cast films featuring African American sequences. Ryan Jay Friedman asserts that these transitional films reflect contradictions within prevailing racial ideologies--arising most clearly in the movies' treatment of African American characters' decisions to migrate. Regardless of how the films represent these choices, they all prompt elaborate visual and narrative structures of containment that tend to highlight rather than suppress historical tensions surrounding African American social mobility, Jim Crow codes, and white exploitation of black labor.