For an introduction to Bollywood, Mumbai’s renowned Hindi-language film industry, Associate Professor of English Priya Joshi, author of Bollywood’s India, recommends these eight movies, available from Temple University Libraries and Netflix, and provides her take on them below in her words.

Bobby (1973)
For the first time in Hindi cinema, teen sexuality gets face and flesh time. Director Raj Kapoor’s paean to young love is a cautionary fable about desire. His Little Red Riding Hood parable remains one of the biggest all-time hits for good reason: It’s fun to watch and is as relevant today as it was in the 1970s.

Deewaar (1975)
[Actor] Amitabh Bachchan’s defiant stance—red shirt, blue jeans, arms akimbo, eyes smoldering; his pursuit of justice in an unjust world; his impossibly deep voice—were the stuff of my dreams, and nightmares. I made sure to have that stance be the cover of Bollywood’s India.

Sholay (1975)
Not once during its five-year first run did I see the curry western Sholay. It didn't matter, because the film was everywhere when I was growing up in India in the 1970s. We heard the songs on the radio, its dialogues were echoed in conversation, and tailors speedily copied the film's fashions for every size and wallet.

Bombay (1995)
Silence and gasoline: That’s what a riot sounds like. That’s what it smells like. But before that, there’s a Hindu man who falls in love with a Muslim woman. How do they explain to their sons, “You’re not Hindu or Muslim, you’re Indian.” The city is burning, and the boys have to choose before an angry mob demanding an answer.

Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (1995)
Sometimes you just want to fall in love. Again. Never mind that the guy’s a total playboy; he did follow you from London all the way to Punjab to tell you he loves you, didn't he? No wonder this is the longest-running film in India’s history—and no wonder President Obama quoted a line from it in his 2015 visit to New Delhi.

Lage Raho Munna Bhai (2006)
When a street thug meets Gandhi (yes, that one) in a city obsessed with land grabs, something’s gotta give. Do gangsters make revolutionaries? Apparently in Bollywood, it doesn't matter, because they’re the same people. The United Nations screened this movie in its New York City headquarters shortly after its release.

A Wednesday (2008)
The stupid common man has had it. He has decided to clean house. “Inspector Rathod? Are you listening? I’ve just planted five bombs in your city.” In this dash against the clock, the inspector and the stupid common man use their wits and all sorts of digital gizmos.

3 Idiots (2009)
Hard to believe that what seems like a silly college romance is actually one of the most powerful critiques of India’s neoliberal ambitions, addressed to the very classes who sell their souls to become engineers in Silicon Valley and venture capitalists in New York. Where did all the dreamers and poets go, the film asks? You’ll have to watch to find out.