Indian Cinema Circuits: Diasporas, Peripheries and Beyond
Conference on Thursday 25th and Friday 26th June, 9.30am 6pm
The Old Cinema, Regent Campus, University of Westminster,
309 Regent Street, London W1B 2UW
Keynote speakers:
Brian Larkin (Barnard College, Columbia University)
Ravi Vasudevan (Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi)
The Indian film industry?s importance for
audiences worldwide has been celebrated by an
increasing number of edited collections and
papers boasting of Bollywood?s globally
expanding territories. However, questions about
the nature of Indian cinema circulation
remain to be explored: what enables Indian
cinema to circulate? How does circulation of
the films themselves sit within a broader set of
flows of film technology, personnel,
music, posters, stars? What theoretical and
methodological tools are appropriate to this
multi-sited field? And whilst the South Asian
diasporic formations of Britain and North
America have been undoubtedly important, much
less analyzed are the Indian diasporas
associated with nineteenth century plantation
capital in the Caribbean, Fiji and South
Africa, as well as those non-Indian audiences
that consume Indian films in Turkey, Nepal,
Austria, Kenya, Russia and elsewhere. These
cinema contexts offer additional positions
from which to develop analyses of Indian cinema:
for example, the plantation diasporas?
historical trajectories are distinctively
different from other diasporas. Moreover, exploring
Indian cinema within diverse national agendas,
whose history and socio-political realities
are not overtly Indian-orientated, opens up
debate on alternative appropriations of India,
as well as questions about the nature of film circulation itself.
Organized by SOAS and the Centre for Research
and Education in Arts and Media (CREAM)
at the University of Westminster, Indian Cinema
Circuits: Diasporas, Peripheries and
Beyond, will focus on questions of circulation,
with particular reference to these
?peripheral? sites, where, in many cases, Indian
films have been watched since the 1930s,
and aims to complicate accounts that position
Bollywood as a recent global phenomenon.
The conference organizers are Atticus Narain
(an5 /at/ soas.ac.uk) and Ranita Chatterjee
(R.Chatterjee /at/ westminster.ac.uk). There are still
some remaining places for paper givers.
To offer to present a paper, please send a title
and 200 word abstract by Monday 4th May
to (R.Chatterjee /at/ westminster.ac.uk)
Conference fee: Waged: £75 for two days (£40 one day)
Students, unwaged and concessions: £15
Staff and students of SOAS and UOW: free
Further details and registration forms available online:
http://www.wmin.ac.uk/mad/page-569. Full
programme will be available online from
15th May
