ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how some of the central debates surrounding Hindi cinema in the 1970s with regard to questions of audience, genre, and self-reflexivity continue to resonate in the present, especially in the indie scene. To sum up, the most significant development in Indian cinema in the past decade has been the emergence of this so-called New Wave indie cinema in a variety of languages and across different regional sites. At least in the context of Hindi cinema, the indie resides within and not outside the Bombay-based commercial film industry and, as we have seen above, the relation between the two is sometimes cordial but often uneasy. Hindi independent cinema is a crucial component of what is new about Bollywood cinema and as such it dwells inside New Bollywood, even though its relationship to it might be oppositional and self-reflexive.
