The book under review is a collection of articles that presents a multi-dimensional view of the here and now of cinema in India with indications of what trajectories it might follow. The editors say in their introduction that they ‘invited researchers from a variety of disciplinary and critical perspectives to reflect on Indian cinema’s current place among other media-cultural forms, public institutions and what the forms’ possible futures might be’ (p. 3).
The shadow of COVID-19 looms large over some of the writings; however, the collection avoids the folly of being myopic and overly topical. The stated objective is to investigate if ‘the pandemic, and serial lockdowns, which began in March 2020, mark a clean break with the pasts of cinema?