South Asian Filmscapes : Transregional Encounters

Elora Halim Chowdhury

ISBN 10: 0295747854 / ISBN 13: 9780295747859

Published by University Of Washington Press Nov 2020, 2020

About this Item

Neuware - 'According Esha De and Elora Chowdhury, the legacies of industrial and independent cinemas in the subcontinent of South Asia reveal an intertwining of South Asian histories that show geopolitical and social boundaries to be both porous and hybrid. On the one hand, cinematic portrayals encode the effects of the massive geopolitical rifts born in postcolonial south Asia of religious, linguistic, and ethnic conflicts--the primary being the India-Pakistan Partition (1947) and the Bangladesh Liberation War (1971). Practices and policies of cinema in the nation-states (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh) likewise reinforce prevailing hierarches of identity and belonging. On the other hand, the combined histories of cinema and sociality in the South Asian region are replete with cross fertilization the effects of which lingered on well past the Partition of India and Pakistan and the birth of Bangladesh. The essays in this volume reveal ways in which fixed notions of national identity have been destabilized by the cross-border mobility of filmed arts and practitioners across South Asia and interrogate how filmic politics intersect with discourses around nationalism, sexuality and gender, religion, and language'--.

Seller Inventory # 9780295747859

Bibliographic Details

• Title: South Asian Filmscapes : Transregional Encounters
• Publisher: University Of Washington Press Nov 2020
• Publication Date: 2020
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0295747854
• ISBN 13: 9780295747859
• Binding: Taschenbuch
• Condition: Neu
• Dimensions: 231W x 157H x 28D millimeters 231 millimeters width by 157 millimeters height by 28 millimeters depth
• Weight: 617 grams

About this title

Synopsis

New political realities and shared histories connect film cultures across borders

In South Asia massive anticolonial movements in the twentieth century created nation-states and reset national borders, forming the basis for emerging film cultures. Following the upheaval of the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947 and the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971, new national cinemas promoted and reinforced prevailing hierarches of identity and belonging. At the same time, industrial and independent cinemas contributed to remarkably porous and hybrid film cultures, reflecting the intertwining of South Asian histories and their reciprocal cultural influences. This cross-fertilization within South Asian cultural production continues today.

South Asian Filmscapes excavates these complex politics and poetics of bordered identity and crossings through selected histories of cinema in South Asia. Several essays reveal ways in which fixed notions of national identity have been destabilized by the cross-border mobility of filmed arts and practitioners, while others interrogate how filmic politics intersects with discourses of nationalism, sexuality and gender, religion, and language. Together, they offer a fluid approach to the multiple histories and encounters that conjure “South Asia” as a geographic and political entity in the region and globally through a cinematic imagination.

About the Authors

Elora Chowdhury is associate professor of women's, gender, and sexuality studies at the University of Massachussetts Boston. She is author of Transnationalism Reversed: Women Organizing Against Gendered Violence in Bangladesh (SUNY Press, 2011), which won the National Women’s Studies Association Gloria E. Anzaldua Book Prize in 2012.

Esha Niyogi De is senior full-time lecturer of English at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is author of Empire, Media, and the Autonomous Woman (Oxford University Press, 2011) and co-editor of Trans-Status Subjects: Gender in the Globalization of South and Southeast Asia (Duke University Press, 2002).