Film as Social History: Debashree Mukherjee on Bombay Hustle

Film historian and media theorist Debashree Mukherjee’s Bombay Hustle: Making Movies in a Colonial City (Columbia University Press and Penguin Random House, 2020; hereafter Bombay Hustle) is concerned with going beyond the screen image to consider the social histories of cine-workers and production practices in the Bombay film ecology of the 1920s–40s. It excavates these histories by revealing the lives and experiences of the people involved in making films, including women. Mukherjee also locates these within a broader framework of social and cultural movements in colonial India. Bombay Hustle, then, offers an alternate lens from which to view the films from that era as well as a link to think through the contemporary cinematic moment. To construct such a complex narrative, Mukherjee had to rely on what she calls a heavily “fragmented” set of archival materials. Due to the fragile nature of film archives in India, most productions from that period are missing and considered “lost films” by scholars. As a result, Mukherjee sought alternative sources and archival forms to piece together a cohesive and a “historically exacting” narrative.

In the second session of this two-part conversation about Bombay Hustle, Mukherjee discusses the role of women during the transition to the talkie, the novel ways in which she researched the book, and why she thinks fans are an essential part of the cine-ecology.

_{(Featured Image: Cast and Crew of Sagar Movietone During the Shooting of Zarina [Dir. Ezra Mir. 1932]. Seated in the middle is the popular actress Zubeida. Courtesy of Osianama Archive & Library Collection.)}

Interview with Ketaki Varma, 16th Feb 2021

To watch the first part of the interview click here.