This workshop will enable participants to discuss the socio-political role of the Indian film industry (the largest in the world) and to direct their gaze upon issues of religion, sexuality, and economics that charge Indian films. We will investigate the shifting ideologies of these films in the past six decades and the manner in which they are reticent about certain issues facing religious and sexual minorities in India. The extent to which popular Indian films homogenize class and gender, while resorting to the language of "national unity," will be highlighted in this workshop. Our objective is to cultivate new pedagogical spaces from which modern Indian cultures and histories may be explored and critiqued. We will discuss the usefulness of showing particular Indian films in order to introduce students to the cultural milieus of South Asia.