Reel world

Anand Pandian

For the last few years, the anthropologist Anand Pandian has interviewed and studied some of the most renowned figures in contemporary Tamil cinema, including directors, artists, musicians and craftsmen. Through lively stories about pitched scripts, rickety sets, stormy fights and box-office pressures, Pandian uses an anthropologist’s eye and a cinephile’s zeal to explore broader questions about how films, Tamil and otherwise, are made.

penguin books india, 408 pages, Rs 499