ReFocus: The Films of Shyam Benegal

Shyam Benegal is widely perceived as one of the most influential Indian filmmakers, yet his voluminous body of work remains relatively under-studied in contemporary film scholarship.To help fill this critical lacuna, ReFocus: The Films of Shyam Benegal undertakes a closer look at Benegal's films, a trailblazing auteur who successfully redefined the contours of non-commercial Hindi language cinema. This addition to ReFocus: The International Directors Series will consider how Benegal, over the course of his forty year career, used cinema as a potent medium to narrate the story of a nation in continuous transition.The 13 essays in the volume will explore how Benegal's films articulate his concerns over caste, class, gender, religion, and other allied social, economic and political problems characterizing the Indian subcontinent. This collection also includes a full-length interview with Shyam Benegal that investigates his perspectives on the art of film-making.

Re-Focus: The Films of Shyam Benegal (2022), edited by Sneha Kar Chaudhuri and Ramit Samaddar, comes as a refreshing contribution to this fledgling area of Shyam Benegal studies. The merit of this volume lies in its scope, as it devotes as much critical attention to Benegal's canonical films as it does to his lesser-known recently released films. This volume, pertinently, situates Benegal within an evolving cultural context inhabited by the criss-crossing of multiple discourses and the metamorphosis of the Indian nation from the Nehruvian to the neoliberal era. It will be of immense value for the academicians and researchers who work in the field of Benegal studies in particular and film studies in general.--Studies in South Asian Film & Media "Subham Dutta"
Re-Focus: The Films of Shyam Benegal (2022), edited by Sneha Kar Chaudhuri and Ramit Samaddar, comes as a refreshing contribution to this fledgling area of Shyam Benegal studies. The merit of this volume lies in its scope, as it devotes as much critical attention to Benegal's canonical films as it does to his lesser-known recently released films. This volume, pertinently, situates Benegal within an evolving cultural context inhabited by the criss-crossing of multiple discourses and the metamorphosis of the Indian nation from the Nehruvian to the neoliberal era. It will be of immense value for the academicians and researchers who work in the field of Benegal studies in particular and film studies in general.--Subham Dutta "Studies in South Asian Film & Media"

Dr Sneha Kar Chaudhuri is Assistant Professor in the Department of English at West Bengal State University. She received her BA (Hons), MA and PhD degrees in English from Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India. She is the Editorial Board member of the international peer-reviewed journal, Neo-Victorian Studies (Swansea University, UK). Her recent publications include a chapter on Tagore's adaptations in Tagore's Drama in the Perspective of Indian Theatre (2020). Her co-edited volume is entitled Tagore's Ideas of the New Woman: The Making and Unmaking of Female Subjectivity (2017). Her areas of specialization are Neo-Victorian Studies, historical fiction and cinema, Adaptation Studies and Gender Studies. Dr Ramit Samaddar is Assistant Professor of English at Jadavpur University. His areas of interest are Romanticism, Victorian studies, travel writing, Bollywood cinema, and Hindi literature.

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