Conventional Landscapes: Identity and Romance in Contemporary Hindi Popular Cinema

Landscapes obviously play a very important role in cinematic representation. In Hindi popular cinema the choice of a landscape - as background, or as part of the scene itself - is meant to convey some definite conventional meanings. As in classical drama and literature, for example, also in cinema paradisiacal natural settings are the traditional locations of romantic love. Contemporary Bollywood films seem to have extended and refined the selection of landscapes to depict new themes and more complex feelings. This paper proposes to identify the conscious use of some of these landscapes, in connection with the themes of romance and cultural identity in a more globalized scenario.