Papers by Ashvin Devasundaram
India’s New Independent Cinema, 2016
India’s New Independent Cinema, 2016
Multidisciplinary Views on Popular Culture Archivo De Ordenador Proceedings of the 5th International Selicup Conference Visiones Multidisciplinares Sobre La Cultura Popular Actas Del 5o Congreso Internacional De Selicup 2014 Isbn 978 84 617 0400 2 Pags 238 245, 2014
The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel imagines a �reverse migration� of elderly British citizens, seekin... more The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel imagines a �reverse migration� of elderly British citizens, seeking a new life in India. This reverse migration could be analysed as an assimilation of �Self� (by the figurative former �colonisers�) via interfusion with the �mirror image� of the �Other�. This paper postulates that the themes in the film could be framed through Arjun Appadurai�s concept of global communities and his five �scapes� of cultural interflows. The preservation of �colonial order� within colonial discourse has been facilitated by a continuum of discrimination and difference. The film�s primary characters either exert agency, or become participative subjects of a transformative process that repudiates the differentiating colonial disavowal of the Other. Homi Bhabha conceives a process of �agonistic� negotiations between binary oppositions that eviscerates a �third space� � from which emerge �hybrid� discourses. This paper locates the symbolic encounter between the film�s British immigrants and postcolonial India, as initially being interlocked in such a tumultuous arbitration. It argues that �The Best Exotic� subverts a Eurocentric disavowal of the Other, instead of extricating a dialogic hybrid from a �third-space� concatenation of binary oppositions. The process of reverse migration arguably subverts the cultural-frontier of the �nation-state�, and subsequently Britain and India�s colonial/postcolonial historical master narratives. It affirms the Lacanian notion of the true apprehension of Self as being in recognition and relation to the Other. The paper ultimately endeavours to locate whether the cathartic assimilation of Self, as manifested in the film, through hybridisation, �indigenisation� and �integration� with the Other, results in equilibrium.
Current history, Apr 1, 2022
India’s mainstream film industry has increasingly fallen under the influence of the Hindu nationa... more India’s mainstream film industry has increasingly fallen under the influence of the Hindu nationalist ruling party and its agenda. But a thriving, multilingual independent sector is producing creative counternarratives.
Book Review: The Cinema of Michael Winterbottom: Borders, Intimacy, TerrorBennettBruce, The Cinema of Michael Winterbottom: Borders, Intimacy, Terror, Wallflower Press, London, 2013, ISBN 9 7802 3116 7376, 224 pp., £17.50. Distributor: Footprint Books Media International Australia, 2015
Media International Australia, 2014
The polemic circumscribing the rise and regulation of new independent Indian cinema is a compelli... more The polemic circumscribing the rise and regulation of new independent Indian cinema is a compelling example of vicissitudes in India's public sphere. This article locates a growing access to new independent Indian films through pirate spheres, reflected in the burgeoning popularity of BitTorrent websites, particularly among young, urban Indians, disenchanted by inaccessibility due to regulations and multiplex cinemas' expensive ticket-pricing system. It precipitates deeper discourses of ‘migrating’ cinema audiences, an ambivalent state of film and internet regulation, and civil resistance, exemplified in the recent Madras High Court volte face, unblocking banned BitTorrent websites. This article invokes interviews with independent filmmakers also utilising the paradigm of independent Bengali film Gandu (2010) – purportedly denied a release for its graphic sexual content, and yet widely accessed via BitTorrent and YouTube. Ultimately, this study examines the discursive ramifi...
Studies in Documentary Film, 2017
Social Anthropology, 2016
This essay explores changing discourses of heritage with reference to concepts of place broadly d... more This essay explores changing discourses of heritage with reference to concepts of place broadly defined. Our virtual case-study is the celebration of genius loci in the film project Cathedrals of Culture (2013), which was initially showcased in Berlin in February 2014. In this series of documentaries, the film director, Wim Wenders, invited five other film directors to give voice to their favorite buildings on 3D. The filmmakers selected the Berlin Philharmonic, the National Library of Russia, Halden Prison, the Salk Institute, the Oslo Opera House and the Centre Georges Pompidou. Our research questions focus on the sense of place generated by these documentaries with particular reference to what Harrison and Rose (2010) call a 'dialogical' model of heritage. While dominant American-European thought has conceptualized heritage in hegemonic material terms, Harrison and Rose (2010) describe heritage as a collaborative venture involving people, material objects and the environment. We query whether giving 'voice' to material artefacts in our Wenders' case-study challenges the material dominance of architecture for heritage, deepens our sense of place and constitutes a step forward for a dialogical model of heritage. From the perspective of critical heritage studies, we ask whether this project gives greater sensitivity to the human/non-human nexus? Does it construct a multivocal sense of place?
In this article, I seek to explore the use and development of the notion of cosmopolitanism withi... more In this article, I seek to explore the use and development of the notion of cosmopolitanism within the context of film festivals. I will examine the specific case study of the Leicester Asian Film Festival from the perspective of an insider-as a Film Programmer and Associate Director of the event. The questions that I intend to answer are: what happens to our understanding of film festivals when we frame it through discourses of cosmopolitanism and borders and, conversely, what happens to our understanding of cosmopolitanism when we frame it through film festival studies? Accordingly, I will place cosmopolitanism in conversation with the developing literature on film festival studies. The aim is to offer an idea of film festivals as "cosmopolitan assemblage", within a frame of fluidity, exchangeability and multiple functionalities (Deleuze and Guattari). In developing this concept, I will draw on Ulf Hannerz's use of the term cosmopolitanism that includes being open to and involved with otherness. The aim is to theorise the idea of festivals as borders, and inspire new forms of consciousness and cultural competency applied to film festival programming. This article aims at discussing film festivals within the wider discourse of cosmopolitan studies. In order to assess film festivals as formed by a variety of cosmopolitan manifestations, I will look at the intersecting nature of film festivals as events, at their programming choices and strategies, at audience responses and at the importance of the filmic texts they exhibit. In doing so, I will start by assessing some recent literature on cosmopolitanism in order to formulate a notion of "cosmopolitan assemblage" that is inspired by the idea of multiple manifestations of cosmopolitanism and by the vision of a universe united in diversity (Fiala 93). The notion of cosmopolitan assemblage will explain the complexity of identity-based film festivals seen as not merely events based on questions of imagined communities (Iordanova, "Film Festival Circuits"), but more completely as events based on a variety of cosmopolitan phenomena. Over the past two decades or so, the notion of cosmopolitanism has attracted interest across a variety of disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. The approach that these disciplines have provided has brought about an updating of the signification of this term from its origins in moral and political philosophy to its status as a core notion in social science, which also includes an evolving and developing interest in debates involving film and media studies (Delanty 5). This article engages specifically with the notion of cultural cosmopolitanism, particularly with debates around multiculturalism, the nation and communities, which I seek to update through discourses on territorialisation and deterritorialisation, or "assemblage" (Deleuze and Guattari 7). Identity-based film festivals have to date been defined by their cultural specificities (Iordanova, "Mediating Diaspora" 13); here, such festivals are studied as creative expressions that challenge the idea of identities as
Analyses of Ingmar Bergman films arguably remain within the strictures of a structuralist or mode... more Analyses of Ingmar Bergman films arguably remain within the strictures of a structuralist or modernist philosophical approach. This paper contends that it is possible to eviscerate alternative essences of meaning in several Bergman films, through the application of a post-structural paradigm. The raison d’etre for this revisionist reading is to excavate latent ontological questions embedded in the films’ subtext, particularly those relating to self and existence. The paper focuses on Karin and her father David-two central characters in the film ‘ Through a Glass Darkly ’. It argues that Karin’s psychosis stems from a Derridean sense of aporia. This state of ‘waylessness’, as exemplified by Karin’s actions in the film, could be attributed to her realisation of the futility of a quest for a transcendental signified-God. Karin’s inability to engender a rapprochement between self and other is compounded by an iconoclastic epiphany. A monologue describing her apprehension of a malevolen...
Indian Cinema Beyond Bollywood, 2018
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Papers by Ashvin Devasundaram