Introduction

Among the several cinemas of the world, the Indian Shakespeare film was virtually invisible except to a few aficionados. It was virtually unknown in Shakespeare film history and criticism: the standard filmography of a hundred years appended in Kenneth Rothwell's A History of Shakespeare on Screen lists only five films from what has been for many years the largest film industry in the world. Internationally, and nationally, Indian cinema, and even Indian culture to some extent, is commonly considered synonymous with 'Bollywood', the prolific Hindi film industry based in Mumbai. Current academic discourse too has almost exclusively directed its attention at Bollywood, which is held to be the norm. The regional films, however, exist in a dialectical tension with the national or pan-Indian cinema. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.