Hindi, 'Bollywood' on Region 1/A, Streaming

[onedimension]

Mods, delete this topic if it's unwelcome, but the only related discussion I found from searching was a brief thread in the International category..

I'm still woefully uninformed on Indian cinema, apart from Criterion's recent Ray releases, and last I investigated, there wasn't much to find on home video anywhere. YouTube seems to have helped, but I still have no idea what to watch or where to find it. Hopeful Criterion can fill the void a little bit (they're looking at 'Mother India').

Some quick, light searching turned up this list from The Guardian, with YouTube vids embedded-

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/ju ... -centenary

And a top 30 list here by 2 students at Harvard - https://mrandmrs55.com/2014/03/04/the-t ... -all-time/

Plus this Time Out London list, from poll of critics, scholars - http://www.timeout.com/london/film/the- ... s-the-list

So any recommendations, context, expertise would be wonderful, plus information about what's available to watch in North America.

[chatterjees]

Its a profound field and a multicultural/lingual industry. you have to be very specific about a decade or type of film you want to follow. I am not into the musicals. I mean I do have to watch them every now and then, but usually don't follow them. For current Hindi films, I am myopic, I have a list of directors I follow. Also, I don't watch films on YouTube, you can call me crazy. Anyways, the directors I follow closely are -
1. Anurag Kashyap - Gangs Of Wasseypur I and II, a must watch. A great blu-ray set has been released in USA few months ago. Go for it, youwon't regret it.
2. Nagesh Kukunoor
3. Farhan Akhtar
4. Dibakar Banerjee - my favorite ones are LSD: Love, Sex Aur Dhokha, Shanghai,
5. Vishal Bhardwaj - his Shakespeare Trilogy (Maqbool, Omkara, and Haider) should blow your mind.
6. Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra
7. Shoojit Sircar-
8. Kiran Rao - Dhobi Ghat (Mumbai Diaries), I have the Indian blu-ray release, which is great. Whe I first watched this film I felt like I was watching something made by Iñárritu. It is a very powerful movie, in my opinion.

Most of their movies are out on good blu-rays, you can actually get them on amazon or ebay. there are a lot of New York based market place sellers. I have bought many.

You can start with these, and then go back eventually. I can always suggest more names. I am not sure how good of a collection Netflix has, but you can always search there.

[onedimension]

Thanks, I recognize 'Gangs of Wasseypur', I'll check it out. Those are mostly contemporary directors? I guess I was implicitly asking, with the lists I chose, about a sort of 'canon', '30 greatest classics of all time', things like the Apu trilogy, 'Mother India'- my own impulse is always to start there as a foundation and then flesh out my knowledge with more varied and popular and obscure/idiosyncratic stuff over time. Although it would be interesting to try learning in the opposite direction.

[Timec]

I’m quite ignorant about the country’s output too, but I’ll throw in a recommendation for Guru Dutt’s Pyaasa as a good introduction to Bollywood cinema. It has a lot of the trademarks, without some of the “excess” that can be offputting to those not used to that style. I found it quite beautiful and moving.

The downside is that it set my expectations unreasonably high, with the result that most Bollywood films I’ve watched since have been underwhelming.

Guru Dutt’s other films are worth watching (Kaagaz Ke Phool in particular), but none of them left as much of an impression.

As for availability—I got most of them on DVD through Netflix several years ago, but I have no idea what the selection is like now. Pyaasa is a classic and popular enough that you should be able to track it down. Beware, though, that a lot of Bollywood DVDs are pretty terrible, with bad transfers, incomplete translations, and prominent watermarks.

[roujin]

For those starting to get into Hindi language cinema, this is a very good resource.