Most readers will cherish Filming for its magical evocation of the cinema's beginnings. Indian movie aficionados will delight in decoding the sly allusions to famous films (Amar Akbar Anthony, 36 Chowringhee Lane, perhaps even Pather Panchali) in the names of characters and places. But this is not just a novel about movies. It shows how the dream-world of cinema, for all its distance from everyday reality, is perpetually vulnerable to the nightmares of history. Elegantly structured and taut with understated passion, Filming is a brilliant recreation of the lost world of early cinema and the continuing tragedy of religious hatred. Although set in an India that has now vanished, its delights as well as its message should find admiring readers everywhere."
- THE INDEPENDENT, London, 29th June 2007
(http://arts.independent.co.uk/books/reviews/article2718291.ece)

I have little doubt that it will establish Tabish Khair in the top rung of Indian authors writing in English. Filming is…a beautifully-crafted novel. It is as powerful a tale of love, and a heart-rending tragedy, as I have read, on the partition of India. The spirit of Saadat Hassan Manto haunts every page.
-- KHUSHWANT SINGH in his syndicated column in The Telegraph, Tribune, and other South Asian publications.
(The Telegraph, India: http://www.telegraphindia.com/1070721/asp/opinion/story_8085176.asp)

But ultimately, and despite the fact that it is structured in reels, not chapters, this is not a novel only about films. The politics of Partition looms large over the screen. Where dreams can enter, so can nightmares. The vicious cycle of communal violence, the frenzy of illogical hatred, the achievement of freedom with a savage cut across its body�"all these contribute to the core of the novel. The material provided by Partition to fiction-writers has been explored in various ways. Khair approaches it from the viewpoint of those who left, in particular the Muslims who left India for Pakistan. Filming is an assured and competent effort to tell a story whose strands "are entangled like the spools of a film slipping from its reel, like lengths of barbed wire.”
-- OUTLOOK India, 30th July 2007 (http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20070730&fname=Booksa&sid=1)