Post-millennial Marathi cinema is a dynamic and expanding practice that is celebrated as a “new-wave” but has not received much critical engagement. This book presents the first comprehensive inquiry of contemporary films and examines their textual, industrial, and cultural intersections to understand what constitutes the “new-ness” of Marathi cinema. Establishing the vernacular particularity of Marathi cinema, the book argues that newage films are actively engaged in a reflexive intellectual and social critique as a mark of new filmmaking in India. In the diversity of genres and topics handled by Marathi filmmakers since 2004 this study identifies four broad affective topographies for analysis – an imagery of nostalgia underpinning the narrative strategies of Marathi films, the articulation of social aspiration as a theme as well as a societal dialectic, an experiential reflexivity in the representation of Dalit and marginal narratives, and a mediatic network of border-crossings through transnational influences on films.
Contemporary Marathi Cinema: Space, Marginality, and Aspiration offers a critical dialogue on broad issues of film policy, multiplex economics, genre forms, queer politics, and neoliberal contexts. It will be indispensable to students and researchers of Indian cinemas, regional filmmaking, media, cultural studies, popular culture and performance, literature, and South Asian studies, and will also be of interest to filmmakers and cinephiles.