The Epic Cinema of Kumar Shahani [Hardcover]

Laleen Jayamanne examines the major works of leading Indian film director, Kumar Shahani, and explores the reaches of modernist film aesthetics in its international form. More than an auteur study, Jayamanne approaches Shahani's films conceptually, as those that reveal cinema's synaesthetic capabilities, or cinaesthesia. As the author shows, Shahani's cinematic project entails a modern reformulation of the ancient oral tradition of epic narration and performance in order to address the contemporary world, establishing a new cinematic expression, an epic idiom. As evidenced by his films, constructing cinematic history becomes more than an archival project of retrieval, and is instead a living history of the present which can intervene in the current moment through sensory experiences, propelling thought.

This very personal book, rich in cinematographic crossreferences, will hopefully awaken the American film public to the unique experimental work of Kumar Shahani, scarcely known here, which opens film to some of its unexplored possibilities.It is a rare gift of intuition and understanding for a scholar to bestow on the artist who is her object of study the same beauty and elegance of expression that attracted her to the artists work in the first place. Such is the gift that Laleen Jayamanne has bestowed on the oeuvre of Indian filmmaker, Kumar Shahani.What would cinematic thought be like refracted through the master filmmakers of Asia? As dazzling in performance as it is daring in conception, this breathtaking book weaves a response by working through the very fabric of Shahanis cinema and his affinities with other visionaries such as Baz Luhrmann. Giving us epic as living tradition and cinema as heritage for the future, Jayamanne is a rare, primary critic at the top of her creative powers. A landmark work for 21st century cinema studies.Laleen Jayamanne allows herself to be (as she says) led astray by one of cinemas most challenging contemporary practl³±