Monika Mehta is Associate Professor of English at State University of New York, Binghamton, USA. She is the author of Censorship and Sexuality in Bombay Cinema (2011/ 2012) and has also co-edited Pop Empires: Transnational and Diasporic Flows of Korea and India (2019).

Madhuja Mukherjee is involved with art-practice, curatorial projects, and filmmaking. She is Professor of Film Studies at Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India. Her research papers have been published in academic journals; she is the author of New Theatres Ltd.: The Emblem of Art, The Picture of Success (Pune: 2009), editor of Aural Films, Oral Cultures: Essays on Cinema from the Early Sound Era (Kolkata: 2012), Voices of the Talking Stars: The Women of Indian Cinema and Beyond (Kolkata/ Delhi: 2017), and Popular Cinema in Bengal: Genre, Stars, Public Cultures (London / New York: 2020).

This volume points to the limits of models such as regional, national, and transnational, and develops 'network' as a conceptual category to study cinemas of India. It addresses themes such as transgressive female figures; networks of authors and technicians; trans-regional production links and changing technologies; and new media geographies.

Introduction: Detouring Networks PART I The Female Star, Traveling Figures and Transgressions 1. Fatma Begum, South Asia's 'First' Female Director: Resurrections from Media and Legal Archives 2. The 'Problem of Respectable Ladies Joining Films': Industrial Traffic, Female Stardom and the First Talkies in Bombay and Tehran 3. Sabita's Journey from Calcutta to Bombay: Gender and Modernity in the Circuits of Cinemas in India 4. Travels of the Female Star in the Indian Cinemas of the 1940s and 50s: The Career of Bhanumathi 5. Bringing Bharatanatyam to Bombay Cinema: Mapping Tamil-Hindi Film Industry Traffic through Vyjayanthimala's Dancing Body PART II Networks of Circulation, Production, and Imaginings 6. Film exhibition in Hyderabad in 1930s: The Case of Motimahal Theatre and Film Circulation 7. Arriving at Bombay: Bimal Roy, Transits, Transitions, and Cinema of Intersection 8. Circumambient Geographies of Cinema: The Shaw Brothers' Malay Film Production Studios in mid-century Singapore 9. Filmfare, the Bombay Industry and Internationalism (1952-1962) 10. Traversing The Evil Within (1971) - Transnational aspirations, Gender, Infrastructure in a post-war Asia PART III Media Geographies, Agencies and Technologies 11. Habits and Worlds: Malayalam Cinema's Travels with the Gulf 12. Celluloid Visions in a Video Frame: Bhojpuri Cinema between Insurrections and Catharsis 13. Mixing Industrial Elements, Generating Sexual Agency in Aiyyaa 14. Blurring the Boundaries Between Hollywood and Bollywood: The Production of Dubbed Films in Mumbai" 15. Making-of Videos: Of Placeless Studios and Pioneering Music Directors 16. The Materiality of Digital Footprints: Video industries, media networks and the "located mobility" of Malegon films