Theorising about Indian cinema has largely been focused on mainstream Hindi films (or ‘Bollywood’) which it is claimed represent the whole film industry and make up the ‘national cinema’. This perspective overlooks the infinitely wide range of films in the four languages of South Indian and the numerous languages of East and North-East India, and privileges certain kinds of subjects and orientations in film theory and research. This paper reviews the attempts of Indian and diasporic film scholars to theorise about the many popular cinemas (including ‘Bollywood’) of the subcontinent. While some scholars use western film theories to make sense of the multilinguistic and multicultural cinemas of India, a growing body of scholars find these inadequate and thus argue for an Indian perspective. The latter tend to explore a film theory that can account for India’s many cinemas. These theoretical perspectives range from political economy and cultural studies to Deleuzian ‘assemblage’ theory, audience ethnography(reception theory), and queer theory. The 13 papers that comprise this special double issue are introduced in the wider context of these several explorations into Indian film theory.
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