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- Top 30 Art & Entertainment Books That Are All-Time Favorites
Top 30 Art & Entertainment Books That Are All-Time Favorites
Having a general awareness about the arts and entertainment is often a marker of how culturally clued in one is. Whether you want to impress friends at a dinner or simply have a desire to learn more about these topics, here are our picks from our endless repository of books! Tell us which one you’re going to pick first?
Other Everydays by Serendipity Arts Foundation
The essays in this volume present a revisionist reading of ”pure” culture from the vantage point of confluence and syncretism; a look at objects of ”craft” that are inextricably linked to the ecology of their origin and to the livelihoods of their makers; and a comprehensive history of the ”charpai” in social usage and popular imagination that enquires into its economic status in a global market.
Explorations of the Contemporary by Serendipity Arts Foundation
Mediating the durational limits of historical progression, the essays in this volume provide new ways to imagine how art occupies time. How does a residency frame the personal histories of each participant, and how does an exhibition distill this into a representational format? Is art-writing coterminous or consequent to the creation of art? How do artists inhabiting the interregnum comprehend the porous, amorphous histories of a region? This volume is a guide to emerging practices in Indian contemporary art.
Continued Traditions & Histories of Performing Art by Serendipity Arts Foundation
Looking at three interventions towards the resurgence of classical styles at Serendipity Arts Festival, the essays in this volume contextualise traditions to provide a rich historiography of select musical drama and music forms of India. From the arrival of the gramophone and early recordings by female artists in India, to the cultural relevance of Chavittu Nadakam, a historic dance-theatre practiced in Kerala, and the celebration of seasons across multiple folk forms of the northern and eastern belts of India, these essays trace the migratory and affinitive genealogies of performing.
Experiments in Performing Arts by Serendipity Arts Foundation
Surveying ten productions in dance and theatre, this volume presents a comprehensive review of the anxieties and aspirations informing contemporary practices in performing arts. In these essays, an experimental resurgence of classical forms and critical reframing of established dramaturgy are explored through performances that interrogate the attenuation of bodily sovereignty, and how this may be implicated in spaces, gestures, and axes of power.
The Personal is Political by Serendipity Arts Foundation
Probing the canon of art history and its discontents, the essays featured in this volume study responses to the varied ecologies of power within cultures of lens-based and performance art. They examine the horizons of personal and collective memory and the phenomenology of a de-sequential temporality. Focusing on practices that contravene axiomatic relations, disciplinary gestures of exclusion, and archival impulses towards erasure, these essays are drawn from surveys of selected films, photo archives, trans-media practices, and performances in South Asia and beyond.
Symbols considers the interconnectedness of art and psychoanalysis, drawing heavily on the insights and theories of Freud and Jung. There is a study of Freud’s attempt to understand the personality of Leonardo da Vinci through his art and life history and then this approach is compared to Jung’s theories of universal symbols and archetypes. The book concludes by presenting a detailed cross-cultural analysis of the Mandala – a universal symbol that acts as a perfect example of how humans from all cultures and through time express subconscious archetypes in their creative outputs. The appendix by Chiara Rostagno, Director of the Museo del Cenacolo Vinciano, explores Leonardo da Vinci from an artistic point of view and links it with his love for Asia and especially India.
A Sense of Space by Ranjit Sabikhi
Growing up in Bombay and Delhi in the 1950s, architect and urban designer Ranjit Sabikhi became interested in the question of space in India’s context. As he taught at the Delhi Polytechnic Department of Architecture, which later became the School of Planning and Architecture, he realized that for the majority of the urban population, daily activities were carried out in the open courts, verandahs, and terraces adjoining the minimal covered space that was their homes. The relationship of buildings to surrounding space was part of the natural process of growth of India’s towns and cities and yet did not figure in the official plans. So he started on a journey of exploration into what traditional Indian architecture was all about, and what would be the meaningful solutions for India’s urban crisis. This is a book that is the result of over fifty years of reflections that will inspire the new generation of architects, planners, and anyone with an interest in India’s cities to look at urban problems afresh and develop a new approach to urban design.
A Journey Within by Olivia Fraser
A Journey Within documents Olivia Fraser’s acclaimed paintings over the last decade, which reflect her remarkable inner quest towards elaboration by simplification. Following her induction into Indian miniature painting in a traditional Jaipur atelier, Fraser’s focus shifted from painting the world around her to depicting a landscape more metaphysical in nature. Trained by her Jaipuri gurus, she learned to grind and mix mineral pigments to their correct consistency. She is especially influenced by Nathdwara pichwai paintings and early nineteenth-century Jodpuri Mansingh-period imagery, produced by the Nath yogis, whose visual language reaches back to an archetypal iconography rooted in India’s deepest and most philosophical artistic heritage — complex abstract thoughts captured in seemingly simple visual language. The work Fraser has produced inspired by these twin muses is nevertheless profoundly contemporary, breaching both temporal and geographical borders, emerging as it does from her twin life between East and West.
What is today the overcrowded, neglected city of Old Delhi that was once the magnificent capital of the Mughal Empire? At its heart was the spectacular Qila-e-Mubarak, now known as the Red Fort. Commissioned by Emperor Shah Jahan in 1639, the beautiful city of Shahjahanabad was built around the spectacular Qila-e-Mubarak (Red Fort), on the banks of the Yamuna. Almost a decade later, in 1648, Shah Jahan entered through the river gate and celebrated the completion of this ‘paradise on earth’ filled with gardens, palaces, water bodies, mosques and temples. About two hundred years later, the last Mughal emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar, left the fort by the same gate after the failed Mutiny against the British in 1857. Subsequently, both the fort and the city fared badly, as they faced the wrath of the British. The final installment in Rana Safvi’s informative, illustrated series of books on Delhi, Shahjahanabad: The Living City of Old Delhi describes the magnificence of the fort and the city through its buildings that are a living monument to the grandeur and strife of the past.
What does it mean to be a woman filmmaker in India? One famous director suffered from depression, unable to take on film projects because of her young child. Another was asked in an interview if she drinks and smokes to deal with the stress of filmmaking as men do. Some faced cinematographers who refused to listen to them. Almost all of them struggle to raise money for films with female protagonists. But they are also cool and sassy. One attended film school with her two-week-old baby. Another stormed the once all-male bastion of the 200-crore club. They can make a hit film about a middle-aged housewife, as much as a bisexual teenager with a disability. F-Rated brings together diverse stories of eleven women filmmakers in India: Aparna Sen, Mira Nair, Farah Khan, Meghna Gulzar, Nandita Das, Shonali Bose, Tanuja Chandra, Anjali Menon, Reema Kagti, Kiran Rao, and Alankrita Srivastava.
A Gandhian Affair by Sanjay Suri
Hindi cinema, ever since Independence, has revolved almost entirely around issues of sex and money. This may seem odd given the conservative taste of the times. But that we do not ‘see’ sex does not hide just how much sex there is in the cinema. As for money, a nagging theme is the impact of money – or the lack of it – on sex. Sanjay Suri argues that Hindi cinema was an unlikely offspring of the Father of the Nation – the product of Gandhi’s celibacy and austerity. His heroic retreat from wealth and sexuality was written into the cinema and then elaborately filmed shot by shot. Suri draws on numerous examples – from Mother India to Do Bigha Zameen; Shree 420 to Pyaasa; Sahib, Bibi aur Ghulam to Guide; and Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge to Lage Raho Munnabhai – to show how cinema was made within well-defined moral fences that were built with dos and don’ts about sex and money. A Gandhian Affair is a history of India through the preoccupations of its cinema.
Chasing the Raag Dream by Aneesh Pradhan
One of the two branches of Indian classical music, the Hindustani (North Indian) music tradition has evolved over thousands of years into the complex ecosystem it is today. From its movement across geographical and class boundaries, its purpose in national identity, its facilitation by governing bodies and representation in broadcast and visual media to its corporate involvement and presence in educational institutions, Chasing the Raag Dream analyses Hindustani music from multiple perspectives to trace its modern-day evolution and find possible pathways to ensure a healthier future for it.
Art and Culture of Italy by Paola Martani
From the Roman Empire to the Sistine Chapel to Michelangelo’s David, Italy has been the cradle for numerous cultural and social developments spanning centuries. This book will introduce the reader to the history and concept of the culture of Italy through its beauty, harmony, aesthetic balance, and historical and ideological perspective.
Nambiarswami by N. Dipak Nambiar
Few actors in Tamil cinema have been as loved as M.N. Nambiar. Admired for his intense acting prowess, particularly his portrayals of villains, he was also revered as a guruswami (spiritual leader). Nambiarswami provides an in-depth look into his public persona and personal life, which he fastidiously kept separate from one another. From growing up in Ooty and joining the gritty world of traveling drama troupes to achieving stellar success in the Tamil film industry, this book takes the reader on an engaging journey narrated by the man himself, as told to his grandson Dipak Nambiar. The foreword by J. Jayalalithaa and stirring anecdotes from his family and industry friends make this book a fascinating portrait of the great actor who was equally adept in his roles as a hero and a villain and widely respected as a spiritual man.
Gulzar’s Angoor by Sathya Saran
Angoor (1982) is among the best-loved comedies in Hindi cinema. It is also a perfect example of Gulzar’s genius as a writer complete with his impish wordplay. Through extensive interviews with some of the main actors in Angoor (Deepti Naval and Moushumi Chatterjee) and its earlier version – both adaptations of Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors – this book traces the evolution of a comic tale that continues to amuse audiences of all ages. It deftly peels the layers exploring how the song, dialogue, silences, and wordplay add to the actors’ arsenal in creating humor that can range from rib-tickling mirth to guffaws. Sathya Saran’s book reveals what lies behind the evergreen appeal of Angoor, with memories and anecdotes shared by Gulzar himself.
Gulzar’s Ijaazat by Mira Hashmi
By the time Gulzar made Ijaazat (1987), action-packed potboilers had replaced the genteel romanticism of yore, leaving few takers for a film about lost love and a broken marriage. And yet, three decades later, Ijaazat is a film that has endured. Gulzar’s interpretation of a love triangle in Ijaazat – an evocative exploration of the strength and fragility of human relationships – was years ahead of its time. This book examines that interpretation to show how, thematically, the film was possibly Gulzar’s most daring. It highlights how his skill as a storyteller – at once romantic and realistic – is exemplified by his complex characters. Contributing to that understanding is how the film’s power also derived hugely from its sublime musical score by R.D. Burman. Drawing on Gulzar’s recollections of the making of the film, Mira Hashmi”s book embraces the memory of the ‘love’ that for the poet wasn’t always the answer, but a part of the question.
Gulzar’s Aandhi by Saba Mahmood Bashir
At one level, Gulzar’s Aandhi (1975) is a story of estranged love between two headstrong and individualistic personalities; at another, it is a tongue-in-cheek comment on the political scenario of the country. Through a close textual analysis of the film, this book examines in detail its stellar cast, the language and dialogues, and the evergreen songs which had a major role in making the film a commercial success. Gulzar’s own insights into the making of Aandhi (from an interview) further enhance the readers’ understanding of the film. Saba Bashir’s book will delight those wanting to savor the duality and drama that befit life, or shall we say cinema.
Three Classic Films by Gulzar by Saran
This box set contains three individual books each of which provides insights into the making of three of Gulzar’s films: Aandhi, Angoor, and Ijaazat. While for Aandhi, author Saba M. Bashir does a close textual analysis of the film, examining in detail its stellar cast, the language and dialogues, and the evergreen songs, for Angoor, Sathya Saran traces the evolution of a comic tale which was an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors. In the third, Mira Hashmi highlights how Gulzar’s skill as a storyteller is exemplified by his complex characters in Ijaazat. All three draw on Gulzar’s own memories of making these films.
Main Shayar Toh Nahin by Rajiv Vijayakar
With the advent of sound, Hindi songs acquired a grammar of their own, thanks to the introduction of songs as a part of the narrative – a tradition that is unique to Hindi cinema. This gave rise to a class of professionals who acquired a star status that was in the league of the actors themselves – the lyricists. Rajiv Vijayakar’s book chronicles the journeys of leading film lyricists – from D.N. Madhok and Pandit Pradeep to Amitabh Bhattacharya and Irshad Kamil, including stalwarts like Shakeel Badayuni and Sahir Ludhianvi, Majrooh Sultanpuri and Anand Bakshi, Gulzar and Javed Akhtar – who have woven magic with the written word. Filled with trivia and never-before-heard-of anecdotes, Main Shaayar Toh Nahin is an introduction to the contribution made by some of the finest wordsmiths to the Hindi film industry.
In the Life of a Film Festival by Sucheta Chakraborty& Rupleena Bose
In 1997, a group of film industry stalwarts, including Hrishikesh Mukherjee, Shyam Benegal, and Ramesh Sippy, founded the Mumbai Academy of Moving Image as a not-for-profit trust to organize an annual international film festival which the film industry and the country can be proud of. Since then, the festival has had its ups and downs. There were days of glory with guests like Oliver Stone, Asghar Farhadi, and Jane Campion, but it nearly shut down in 2014 because the main sponsors pulled out (which is when the current team stepped in). Its survival is a testament to our love for cinema. This book, released in honour of 20 years of MAMI, looks at its storied history and is a tribute to the passion which has made this festival what it is.
Travails with the Alien by Satyajit Ray
Satyajit Ray was a master of science fiction writing. Through his Professor Shonku stories and other fiction and non-fiction pieces, he explored the genre from various angles. In the 1960s, Ray wrote a screenplay for what would have been the first-of-its-kind sci-fi film to be made in India. It was called The Alien and was based on his own short story Bonkubabur Bandhu”. On being prompted by Arthur C. Clarke, who found the screenplay promising, Ray sent the script to Columbia Pictures in Hollywood, who agreed to back it, and Peter Sellers was approached to play a prominent role. Then started the “Ordeals of the Alien” as Ray calls it, as even after a series of trips to the US, UK and France, the film was never made, and more shockingly, some fifteen years later, Ray watched Steven Spielberg’s film Close Encounters of the Third Kind and later E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, and realized these bore uncanny resemblances to his script The Alien, including the way the ET was designed! A slice of hitherto undocumented cinema history, Travails with the Alien includes Ray’s detailed essay on the project with the full script of The Alien, as well as the original short story on which the screenplay was based.
Within Without by Briana Blasko
Over a period of four years, Briana Blasko traveled and photographed extensively across India and Nepal, observing the lives of practicing Jains, Buddhists, Sufis and Hindus, and a Catholic priest. Although the photographs reflect a belonging to specific religions and traditional practices, this book is not intended to be about religion; rather, it aims to share an innate interconnectedness of the spiritual life. Within Without showcases a series of 71 black and white and color photographs that document the path of yogis and the current that carries the searcher to go beyond all forms and senses, to renunciation and acceptance.
A Southern Music by M. Krishna
T.M. Krishna, one of the foremost Karnatik vocalists today, begins his panoramic exploration of that tradition with a fundamental question: what is music? Taking nothing for granted and addressing diverse readers from Karnatik music’s rich spectrum and beyond it, Krishna provides a path-breaking overview of south Indian classical music. He advances provocative ideas about various aspects of its practice. Central to his thinking is the concept of ‘art music’, the ability to achieve abstraction, as the foundational character of Karnatik music. In his explorations, he sights the visible connections and unappreciated intersections between this music form and others – Hindustani music, Bharatanatyam, fusion music and cine music – treading new, often contentious, ground. A Southern Music seeks to retrace the sources of Karnatik music even as it reflects on its self-renewing vitality today. To that end, Krishna examines a number of issues that Karnatik music must face up to: questions of gender and caste, the role of religion and of lyrics inspired by devotional sentiments, the diaspora and its relationship with ‘classical’ music, technology. Unquestionably the definitive book on Karnatik music.
Satyajit Ray is acknowledged to be one of the world’s finest film-makers. This book brings together some of his most cerebral writings on film.With the economy and precision that marked his films, Ray writes on the art and craft of cinema, pens an ode to silent cinema, discusses the problems in adapting literary works to film, pays tribute to contemporaries like Godard and Uttam Kumar, and even gives us a peek into his experiences at film festivals, both as a jury member and as a contestant. Including fascinating photographs by and of the master, Deep Focus not only reveals Ray’s engagement with cinema but also provides an invaluable insight into the mind of a genius.
Indira by Indira Gandhi Memorial Trust
This book is a collection of rare and some previously unseen photographs of Indira Gandhi. It is a record of her life from childhood to her untimely death in 1984. The photographs have been painstakingly collected from press archives, family albums, photographers and other sources. A collector’s edition, this book is as much a record of the 1960s to the 1980s as a portrait of Indira Gandhi’s life.
50 Films That Changed Bollywood, 1995-2015 by Shubhra Gupta
Hindi cinema was trapped in formulaic cliches for decades: lost-and-found themes, sacrificing mothers, brothers on opposite sides of the law, villains lording over their dens, colourful molls, six songs, the use of rape as a plot pivot, and cops who always arrived too late. It hit an all-time low in the 1980s. Then, in 1991, came liberalization, and a wave of openness and aspiration swept across urban India. Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge was released in 1995 – and Hindi cinema became Bollywood. A new crop of film-makers began to challenge and break away from established rules. Over the next twenty years, a number of Hindi films consistently pushed the envelope in terms of content and technique to create a new kind of cinema. Among other innovations, film-makers came up with ways of crowd funding a film (Ankhon Dekhi), did away with songs if the narrative did not need them (Gangaajal), addressed different sexual preferences (My Brother … Nikhil) and people with special needs (Black) like no one had ever done before. As film critic with the Indian Express, Shubhra Gupta has stayed the course these twenty years and more and experienced the transition first-hand. In 50 Films That Changed Bollywood she looks at the modern classics that have redefined Hindi cinema – from DDLJ and Rangeela to Satya and Dev D to Queen and Bajrangi Bhaijaan. Gupta offers a fascinating glimpse into how these films spoke to their viewers and how the viewers reacted to them – and, ultimately, how they changed us and how we changed them.
Raj Kapoor, the creator of some of Hindi cinema’s most enduring classics, is one of the greatest film-makers India has ever produced. As producer, director, actor, editor, storyteller, he blazed a trail for subsequent generations of film-makers to follow and aspire to. He was also known to the world as an extraordinary and controversial showman, an entertainer par excellence, someone who created the template for Hindi cinema. Raj Kapoor: The One and Only Showman is a unique experiment, both an autobiography and a biography. While the autobiography uses his own words, culled from interviews, journals and anecdotes, to provide an intimate glimpse into the mind of a genius, the biography is an attempt to record for posterity the lesser-known facets of his magnificent personality through the recollections of his family, colleagues and friends. As revealing as it is engaging, this is a fascinating portrait of the man regarded as the last of the true movie moguls of Indian cinema.
The Vanished Path by Bharath Murthy
In 2009, Bharath Murthy took refuge as a lay Buddhist. Soon after, accompanied by his wife Alka, he set out on a pilgrimage to the historical sites in India and Nepal associated with the life of Siddhattha Gotama the Buddha. The Vanished Path is an account of their journey through the ruins that mark the Buddha’s life – the places where he lived and taught, lands from where all traces of that past have almost disappeared. As the duo wends its way from Sarnath to Lumbini, from Kudan to Bodhgaya and many places in between, Bharath’s pen brings alive the sights and sounds and smells of these places. Whether it is Buddhism you’re interested in or travel, this is a journey you will find yourself drawn into.
Behind a Billion Screens by Nalin Mehta
In Behind a Billion Screens, Nalin Mehta looks closely at how television works in India, how TV channels make their money – or not – and what this means for the cacophony that appears on our screens. Given that television is a strategically vital social gateway for power, he also probes the ownership of television networks – politicians, corporations, real-estate tycoons – and tells us why this matters. Based on extensive research and wide-ranging conversations with industry leaders, channel heads, policy makers and politicians, this is a comprehensive report on the state of the Indian television industry, how it is shapeshifting in response to the ferment of mobiles and social media and its vital role in the wider Indian story. Everybody watches television, everybody has an opinion on it and everybody claims to have solutions, but Mehta brings new research and understanding to illuminate a topic that often raises a lot of heat and smoke but little light.
Gaata Rahe Mera Dil by Anirudha Bhattacharjee
Look behind the scenes of fifty celebrated songs, from an estimated repository of over one lakh! Here is an extraordinary compilation, peppered with trivia, anecdotes and, of course, the sheer joy of music. Find out answers to questions like: With which unreleased film did Kishore Kumar turn composer? In which song picturization was dry ice first used? Which all-time classic musical was initially titled Full Boots? Where was the title song of An Evening in Paris shot? The idea for which song originated when the film-maker visited Tiffany’s in London? Which major musical partnership resulted from the celebrations around an award function for a commercial jingle for Leo Coffee? How many of your favourites find mention here? Make your own list!
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