From Bombay (Mumbai) and other production centres on the Indian subcontinent, Indian popular cinema has travelled globally for nearly a century, culminating in the Bollywood-inspired, Oscar-winning film Slumdog Millionaire.

This volume brings together perspectives on Indian popular cinema, universally known as Bollywood now, from different disciplinary and geographical locations to look afresh at national cinemas. It shows how Bollywood cinema has always crossed borders and boundaries: from the British Malaya, Fiji, Guyana, Trinidad, Mauritius, and East and South Africa to the former USSR, West Asia, the UK, the USA, Canada, and Australia. While looking at the meanings of nation, diaspora, home, and identity in cinematic texts and contexts, the essays also examine how localities are produced in the new global process by broadly addressing nationalism, regionalism, and transnationalism, politics and aesthetics, as well as spectatorship and viewing contexts.

With contributions from eminent anthropologists, historians, and scholars of cultural, media, communication, and film studies, this book will appeal to anybody keen on learning more about the historical and spatial journeys of Bollywood cinema.

Anjali Gera Roy is Professor, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Kharagpur and was Senior Research Fellow, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore between 2008 and 2010.

Chua Beng Huat is concurrently Leader, Cultural Studies in Asia Research Cluster; Convenor, PhD Programme in Cultural Studies in Asia; and Professor, Department of Sociology, National University of Singapore.