000			01870nam a2200193Ia 4500
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020			_a9789354352294 _qpbk
041			_aeng
082			_a791.4302 _bSAY
100			_aSayandeb Chowdhury
245		0	_aUttam Kumar : a life in cinema _c/ Sayandeb Chowdhury
250			_a1st ed.
260			_bBloomsbury India _c2021 _aNew Delhi
300			_axviii, 299 p. _b: ill. _c ; 23 cm.
504			_aBib and Ref
520			_aActor and screen icon Uttam Kumar (1926–1980) is a talismanic figure in Bengali public life. Breaking away from established codes of onscreen performance, he came to anchor an entire industry and led the efforts to reimagine popular cinema in mid-20th-century Bengal. But there is pitifully less knowledge about Uttam Kumar in the learned circles-be it about his range of style and performance; the attractions and problems of his cinema; his roles as a producer and patriarch of the industry; or his persona, stardom and legacy. The first definitive cultural and critical biography of this larger-than-life figure engages meaningfully with his life and cinema, revealing the man, hero and actor from various, often competing, vantages. The conceptual aim is to locate a star figure within a larger historical and cultural context, and to enquire into how a towering image was mobilised for an ever-greater, wholesome, popular and even, at times, radical and progressive entertainment. A complimentary métier of this work is to explore why and how this star persona would go on to reconstitute the bhadrolok Bengali visual and cultural world in the post-Partition period. But above all, this is the story of a clerk who became an actor, an actor who became a star, a star who became an icon and an icon who became a legend.
650			_aJournalism and Mass Communication
942			_cENGLISH
999			_c521302 _d521302