2016 Chapters (Layout Features)

Tracking Utopias: Technology, Labor, and Secularism in Bombay Cinema (1930s-1940s)

Mukherjee, Debashree

This article analyzes a range of modes through which the promise of utopia was mobilized in late colonial Bombay cinema. We witness a conflicted terrain of interests and desires as alternate film histories come into view. I look at 3 lost films written by Sa'adat Hasan Manto, examine their content and context, and open up discussion of technological utopianism, the impact of socialist thought, and prescriptive visions of secular harmony in pre-Independence talkie cinema.