Ashish Vithal Rajadhyaksha (born 12 March 1957) is an Indian film scholar, art curator and cultural theorist. He was a Senior Fellow at the

Bangalore Bangalore (), officially Bengaluru (), is the capital and largest city of the Indian state of Karnataka. It has a population of more than and a metropolitan population of around , making it the third most populous city and fifth most ...

-based Centre for the Study of Culture and Society.

Early life

Ashish Vithal Rajadhyaksha was born on 12 March 1957 in Bombay (later renamed

Mumbai Mumbai (, ; also known as Bombay — the official name until 1995) is the capital city of the Indian state of Maharashtra and the ''de facto'' financial centre of India. According to the United Nations, as of 2018, Mumbai is the second- ...

), India. His father was a soldier in the Indian army. Rajadhyaksha's serious interest in cinema developed in the late 1970s. In 1978, he graduated from the

University of Bombay The University of Mumbai is a collegiate, state-owned, public research university in Mumbai. The University of Mumbai is one of the largest universities in the world. , the university had 711 affiliated colleges. Ratan Tata is the appointed ...

with a

Bachelor of Science A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Science was the University of ...

degree.

Career

Rajadhyaksha developed a keenness for

Ritwik Ghatak Ritwik Kumar Ghatak (; 4 November 19256 February 1976) was a noted Indian film director, screenwriter, and playwright. Along with prominent contemporary Bengali filmmakers Satyajit Ray, Tapan Sinha and Mrinal Sen, his cinema is primarily rememb ...

's films after attending a course organised by the

Film and Television Institute FTI WA Inc., formerly the Film and Television Institute and also known as the Perth Institute of Film and Television, was a screen resource centre located in Western Australia aimed at increasing the vibrancy of the screen sector, including film ...

and the National Film Archive of India in the early 1980s. The first book that he authored was ''Ritwik Ghatak: A Return to the Epic'', published in 1982. Starting in 1983, he wrote numerous articles for publications such as the Calcutta (now

Kolkata Kolkata (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , the official name until 2001) is the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal, on the eastern bank of the Hooghly River west of the border with Bangladesh. It is the primary business, comme ...

)-based ''Journal of Arts & Ideas'' and the

New Delhi New Delhi (, , ''Naī Dillī'') is the capital of India and a part of the National Capital Territory of Delhi (NCT). New Delhi is the seat of all three branches of the government of India, hosting the Rashtrapati Bhavan, Parliament House ...

-based ''Journal of the Moving Image''. He authored, with

Paul Willemen Paul Willemen (17 August 1944 – 13 May 2012) was a Belgian-born British professor, author and essayist. According to the British Film Institute, he was regarded as "a pioneering figure in the revolution in thinking about the cinema that be ...

, ''Encyclopaedia of Indian Cinema'' in 1994. After a long hiatus, Rajadhyaksha's next book, a solo, was ''Indian Cinema in the Time of Celluloid: From Bollywood to the Emergency'' in 2009, followed by ''The Last Cultural Mile: An Inquiry into Technology and Governance in India'' in 2011, and ''Indian Cinema: A Very Short Introduction'' in 2016.

Personal life

Rajadhyaksha was married to Pushpamala N., a Bangalore-based artist. The couple later divorced.

Books written

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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rajadhyaksha, Ashish 1957 births Film theorists Indian film historians Living people People from Mumbai University of Mumbai alumni