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Ashish Rajadhyaksha

Indian film scholar and cultural theorist

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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-based Centre for the Study of Culture and Society.^[1]

Ashish Vithal Rajadhyaksha^[2] was born on 12 March 1957 in Bombay (later renamed Mumbai), India.^[1] His father was a soldier in the Indian army. Rajadhyaksha's serious interest in cinema developed in the late 1970s.^[3] In 1978, he graduated from the University of Bombay with a Bachelor of Science degree.^[1]

Rajadhyaksha developed a keenness for Ritwik Ghatak's films after attending a course organised by the Film and Television Institute 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.^[3] Starting in 1983, he wrote numerous articles for publications such as the New Delhi–based Journal of Arts & Ideas and Calcutta (now Kolkata)–based Journal of the Moving Image.^[1] He authored, with Paul Willemen, Encyclopaedia of Indian Cinema in 1994.^[4][5] 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,^[1][6] followed by The Last Cultural Mile: An Inquiry into Technology and Governance in India in 2011,^[3] and Indian Cinema: A Very Short Introduction in 2016.^[7]

Rajadhyaksha was married to Pushpamala N., a Bangalore-based artist.^[8] The couple later divorced.^[9]

• Rajadhyaksha, Ashish (1982). Ritwik Ghatak: A Return to the Epic. Screen Unit. OCLC 10516837.
• Rajadhyaksha, Ashish; Willemen, Paul (1998) [1994]. Encyclopaedia of Indian Cinema. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-563579-5.
• Rajadhyaksha, Ashish (2009). Indian Cinema in the Time of Celluloid: From Bollywood to the Emergency. Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0-253-22048-6.
• Rajadhyaksha, Ashish (2011). The Last Cultural Mile: An Inquiry into Technology and Governance in India. Centre for Internet and Society. OCLC 925374086.
• Rajadhyaksha, Ashish (2016). Indian Cinema: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-872309-7.