It is a rare gift of intuition and understanding for a scholar to bestow on the artist who is her object of study the same beauty and elegance of expression that attracted her to the artist's work in the first place. Such is the gift that Laleen Jayamanne has bestowed on the oeuvre of Indian filmmaker, Kumar Shahani. -Sumita Chakravarty, author of National Identity in Indian Popular Cinema, 1947-1987 What would cinematic thought be like refracted through the master filmmakers of Asia? As dazzling in performance as it is daring in conception, this breathtaking book weaves a response by working through the very fabric of Shahani's cinema and his affinities with other visionaries such as Baz Luhrmann. Giving us epic as living tradition and cinema as heritage for the future, Jayamanne is a rare, primary critic at the top of her creative powers. A landmark work for 21st century cinema studies. -Meaghan Morris, University of Sydney Laleen Jayamanne allows herself to be (as she says) 'led astray' by one of cinema's most challenging contemporary practitioners to produce an entirely original interpretative frame for Kumar Shahani. She sees Shahani's work through material practices drawn from the South Asian subcontinent, even as she places him in a cinema peopled by such unlikely compatriots as Rocha and Pasolini, Kubrick and Paradyanov, and even Baz Luhrmann. Throwing light on this practice are concepts drawn as much from Eugenio Barba and Suely Rolnik as from D.D. Kosambi. Jayamanne's 'epic cinema' is revealed as deeply paradoxical, but capable of astonishing connections, relays of meaning and associations of ideas. -Ashish Rajadhyaksha, Senior Fellow, Centre for the Study of Culture and Society This very personal book, rich in cinematographic crossreferences, will hopefully awaken the American film public to the unique experimental work of Kumar Shahani, scarcely known here, which opens film to some of its unexplored possibilities. -Fredric R. Jameson, Duke University
