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This module offers a comparative examination of the two largest film industries of the twentieth century: American Hollywood cinema and Indian ‘Bollywood’ (popular, Hindi language) cinema. While Hollywood and Bollywood fimmaking both represent only one sector of filmmaking in North America and the Indian subcontinent respectively (where other forms of independent filmmaking in a host of different linguistic cultures co-exist), they are taken here as interrelated but distinctive industrial formations that dominated popular cinema of the twentieth century. The module invites students to consider how these different media ecologies produced different films, but also to consider the different historical methods and approaches necessary for studying these respective industries. The module therefore simultaneously introduces students to the history of these two systems and some of their major films but also invites them to critically interrogate the historical methods and sources we use to undertake historical research itself.

Although the module roughly spans the 1920s to the 1960s, it is not organized chronologically but around five key words: studios, stars, directors, genres, and technologies, with one week dedicated to each of these topics in relationship to Hollywood and Bollywood respectively. However, the course will invite comparative analysis across these industries to consider how the different structures of film production in Los Angeles and Bombay/Mumbai cultivated different approaches to issues of style and aesthetics, as well as economic issues and questions of labour organisation. Central to this module is the question of how we understand these industries in relation to ‘modernity’ and its attendant links to technology, mass culture, political ideologies and coloniality.