As a film-maker and film historian, B.D. Garga has closely witnessed and participated in the growth of Indian cinema from the early 1940s. With more than fifty year's experience as a film journalist, and having served on various national and international film festival juries, he is probably India's foremost authority on the subject of cinema.
In this extraordinary collection of essays, Garga delves into the vast repertoire of his scholarship and experience to provide an insider's view of Indian and international cinema over the years. Even as he discusses the contribution of men behind the screen - the director, editor, cinematographer - he profiles some of the greatest masters of Indian cinema, like Himanshu Rai and P.C. Barua, Bimal Roy and Raj Kapoor, while critically analyzing some classic films from the golden era of cinema in India - Devdas (1935) and Sant Tukaram (1936) to Mother India (1957) and Mughal-e-Azam (1960).
Embellished with over forty exquisite and vintage photographs from the author's private collection, The Art of Cinema also contain fascinating essay that highlight the contribution of the soviet masters to international cinema; address important issue like film censorship, sex in Indian films and the relationship between film and politics; and provide a memorable account of the origins of cinema in India and the country's many cinematic milestones.
About the Author:
Bhagwan Das Garga is one of the India's most eminent film scholars and a founder member of the National Film Archive, Pune. Born in Lehra, Punjab, in 1924' he began working in films under the eminent film-maker V. Shantaram. He made his first documentary, Strom Over Kashmir, in 1948-49 and has since than written, directed and produced over fifty documentary films.
Between 1953 and 1957, he worked with various film units in Europe and at the Mosfilm Studios, Muscow. After spending years extensively researching the history of Indian cinema, he produced the first film anthology to commemorate its golden jubilee in 1963. In 1967, he was invited by the UNESCO to be on the committee of experts on the 'History of World Cinema'. He served as a member of the Film Federation of India for his contribution to the growth of cinema in the country. In 1996, his book so Many Cinemas: The Motion Picture in India was published to wide acclaim and has since been hailed as a seminal work of Indian cinema. The same year he was honoured with the first V. Shantaram Award for Lifetime Achievement at the Mumbai International Film Festival.
He currently resides with his wife in Goa and is working on a hand book on the non-fiction film.
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