The Best of Tamil Cinema – 1931 to 2010
– First ever book on Tamil cinema in English covering the 80 years history
The Best of Tamil Cinema: 1931 to 2010 is the first-ever English book to have a wealth of information about the best movies of the Tamil film industry. This book is written by Mr. G. Dhananjayan, former Chief Executive of Moser Baer Entertainment (Film Business). He is a well-known figure in the Indian film circles for his involvement in the production and marketing of films and home videos in Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, Hindi and other Indian languages. He was also one of the two founding members of Moser Baer Entertainment, which has grown to become one of India’s largest home entertainment brands.
This two-volume 600+ page book covers details about over 230 trend setting and landmark films of Tamil cinema from 1931 to 2010 – from Kalidas (1931) to Nandhalala (2010). It narrates the journey of the industry through a period of eight decades. Volume I of the book presents the best films released between 1931 and 1976, while Volume II deals with the period between 1977 and 2010.
From over 1000 films, which were hits and super hits in Tamil cinema in this period, The Best of Tamil Cinema were carefully selected after thorough review based on two methods – For Volume I – experts’ view and for Volume II – based on a survey among the veteran writers on Tamil cinema. For both the volumes, commercial performance of the film is taken as the basis. Each film appearing in the book is given a 2-4 page detailed write up in the book along with unseen stills and posters.
It took two years for Mr. Dhananjayan to complete this book as he watched every movie shortlisted through the survey and experts’ views before writing a feature on it. According to him, the compilation of the first volume was a demanding task, as it was not easy to collect the video sources of the films released way back in 1930s. However, with persistence, he collected the video sources from across the globe and watched the films to give an authentic synopsis for each film. The write ups for each film were based on real film source than based on hearsay or media write ups. Only for a few films, for which no source is available, he relied on the song books of them, which carried the story for such films.
Some of the attractive features of the book:
- The entire 80 years’ of Tamil cinema is covered in the two volumes
- Unseen photographs & promotional posters of films
- Treasure-house of information about the best of Tamil cinema
- Laminated & color printing of international quality
- Well researched write ups for each film
- A must-have collectors’ item for anyone interested in Tamil cinema
Galatta Media is the publisher of The Best of Tamil Cinema: 1931 to 2010 which also manages the online and offline marketing of the book. The Best of Tamil Cinema: 1931 to 2010 will be available in all leading book stores across India for INR.2,999/-
More details are given in: http://www.galatta.com/bestoftamilcinema/
The Best of Tamil Cinema: 1931 to 2010 will be released on 2nd March 2011 by Padma Shri Dr. Kamal Haasan, Legends of Tamil cinema K. Balachander, Mahendran, Balu Mahendra, Cheran, Misskin along with several top film makers and who’s who of Tamil Cinema in a grand manner. The book will be available globally on the same day.
The Tamil version of the book will be released in June 2011.
