In the thirteen weeks, the students will be introduced to the beginnings of Hindi cinema, and follow its trajectory in each following decade, the changes that happened in film-making, the styles of story-telling, performances, the thematic influences, and so on. We will take note of how cinema, especially popular, mainstream cinema, has kept up, or not, with the times, and how it reflects the times we live in. Provenance is imperative. Unless we know where something comes from, the path it has taken to reach us, it is near impossible to have an understanding, and a critical appreciation of it. Both of those, inextricably connected, will be key learnings in this course.