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The article offers information on the reinterpretation of Nirupa Roy as the "Queen of Misery" in 1980s Indian cinema, examining alternative dynamics of maternal care. Topics include the socio-cultural conditioning of motherhood, which dictates self-sacrificial roles and restricts self-actualization, the normative glorification of the mother figure in Indian society shaping social identity, and the patriarchal structures that confine women to caregiving roles.

Cricket in India has evolved much beyond its fundamental definition as a game or form of entertainment in the present century. The liberalization process in the 1990s, followed by the drastic social changes in the country, impacted the game, leading it to acquire new meanings as cultural text. Currently, Indian cricket forms part of collective enjoyment, forming people's habitus and playing a central ideological role in the politics of ethnonationalism. This article attempts to analyze Indian Cricket using Slavoj Zizek's concept of "national Thing," to critically understand its potential to evoke hyper‐nationalism in the Indian polity. The concept of "national Thing," proposed by Zizek, postulates that the recourse to nationalism can cause a pleasure‐in‐pain situation and evoke extreme "enjoyment" (jouissance), which functions on the idea of sudden sense of loss. Drawing insights from this, this paper theoretically investigates sport‐induced nationalism in cricket in the backdrop of escalating neo‐nationalist sentiments in India. Additionally, the article expounds on how cricket becomes a "lost Thing" in Indian popular culture by critically analyzing the Indian film Kai Po Che (2013), in which cricket emerges as a social and political entity, intervening with the lives of ordinary youths in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Axone is a recently released Indian film revolving around Northeastern cuisine. Through culinary reimagining, the film raises several issues regarding Northeastern migrants who largely remain invisible in the public discourse. The present article attempts to examine the embodied experiences of the Northeasterners in the Indian capital, Delhi, through the analysis of the film from a culinary lens. Affirming the film's status as a food film, the article first tries to locate axone in the Indian culinary order, which has been hegemonized by the caste ideas of ganda (dirty) and gandha (smelly). Secondly, it engages with the politics of otherness played around the Northeastern food by employing social and sensorial boundaries. Thirdly, it brings to the fore the discourse of racism, which is central to the experience of Northeasterners living in the city. Lastly, the article delists the Northeastern migrants only as victims of the city and explores their place-making strategies by taking into account the agentic potential of their culinary culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the recent rise of Islamophobic films in India. While it may seem that social media has led to a rise in Hindu nationalism and Islamophobia in the recent past, it is crucial to recognize that this narrative is incomplete. The rise of Islamophobia in the country can be traced back to the 20th century freedom struggle where a counter-narrative to Gandhian concepts of communal harmony can be found in the writings of various leaders, artists and activists. Social media has allowed for a re-proliferation of those strands of thought in recent times through the platforms such as Youtube, which has led to the success of movies like The Kashmir Files or The Kerala Story. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article seeks to examine the representation of masculinities and femininities in the renowned South Indian drama film The Great Indian Kitchen. The research construes the manner in which the two dominant genders promote and/or modify patriarchal norms within the institution of family. The functioning of women as ancillary members of patriarchy, the interplay between masculinities and femininities, their evolution in contemporary times, etc., are also critically engaged in the paper. The paper argues that the movie The Great Indian Kitchen not only illustrates different masculinities and femininities but also reconstructs the patriarchal family structure which institutionalises gender inequality. It further argues that the movie proposes an alternative image of the family based on gender equality, where men and women live with mutual respect and complementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The debate on film censorship in colonial India is rife with assertions that censorship was introduced to empty Indian films of their nationalist content. But the examination of the Bengal Board of Film Register shows that for the period between 1920 and 1928, indigenously produced films counted for much less than American films, and film censorship during the silent era was more focused on female sexuality rather than nationalism and politics. Most of the cuts affected in films exhibited in Bengal Presidency were sexual rather than explicitly political in nature. And by the end of the 1920s, the discourse of film censorship in India would metastasize around the moral need to protect the white woman. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the rise of movies in India that depict scenes of sexual abuse and rape, often glorifying the acts and portraying them in a detailed and graphic manner. These movies often present rape as a tool for power and ownership, with the perpetrators being the sons of influential and powerful fathers. The article provides examples of such movies and highlights the negative socio-cultural impact they have, perpetuating violence against women and promoting the idea that women desire violence. The authors suggest that stricter filtering and certification by the Indian Censor Board, as well as the adoption of an accepted moral code by the media industry, could address this issue. [Extracted from the article]

The article discusses the depiction of sexual violence in Indian films and its reflection of wider cultural norms. It highlights the pervasive influence of a male perspective throughout the filmmaking process, from producers to audiences. The portrayal of rape and sexual violence in Indian films often focuses on the pain and humiliation of women, the satisfaction of men, and the sadistic pleasure derived from the brutality. The article argues for the need to handle these depictions with sensitivity, maturity, and respect for survivors, and calls for greater representation of women in the filmmaking industry. It also examines the influence of social class, ethnic identity, context, and tropes in shaping the portrayal of sexual violence. The normalization of abusive acts and the romanticization of problematic male behaviors in films are also discussed. The article concludes by emphasizing the importance of minimizing the glorification of sexual violence, promoting respectful behavior towards women, and dismantling the underlying misogyny and sexual abuse that is perpetuated in Indian films. [Extracted from the article]

Therefore, Sunya approaches the films as not only media artifacts but also media archives that unlock historiographic possibilities through granular and grounded analysis. Footnotes 1 Samhita Sunya, I Sirens of Modernity: World Cinema via Bombay i (Oakland: University of California Press, 2022), 14. 2 Sunya, 1. 3 Sunya, 31, 40. 4 Sunya, 47, 48. 5 Sunya, 17. 6 Sunya, 46. 7 Sunya, 49, 205. 8 Sunya, 84. 9 Sunya, 84, 15. 10 Sunya, 9. 11 Sunya, 24. 12 Sunya, 88. 13 Sunya, 89. 14 Sunya, 116. [Extracted from the article]

This cross-sectional study examines the acceptance of Indian cinema among Chinese cinephiles to determine how the audience perceives and is influenced after watching Indian films. Researchers surveyed the local Chinese audience and collected 2,129 valid self-structured e-questionnaires. Respondents belonged to Mainland China. Results showed significant characteristics that make Indian movies attractive to about 50% of the Chinese population. Findings also indicate that Chinese people still welcome good stories from India in blockbuster Bollywood films, despite tense Sino-Indian relations. Indian cinema plays a significant role as a soft power bridging both nations. The Indian film industry will continue to evolve to satisfy the audience's needs in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

India and the rest of the world continue to witness waves of COVID-19. In this article, I present myriad examples of ethical issues in the context of pandemics that hit India in the last few centuries. I also analyze the relevance of Indian texts and films in the context of various pandemics. The article quotes several primary and secondary texts to explore interpreting and responding to different pandemics and broader health issues. As the world reels under the COVID mayhem, it is time to take inspiration from various other medical professionals at the forefront of fighting this pandemic. We urgently need their compassion and not any recurrence of colonialism or racism that rears its head even today. Our collective responses to COVID-19 can prompt us to collectively mitigate and adapt to various climate changes across the planet by combining the ideas and imaginations from the "East" and "West." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article titled "Chandragupta Maurya: The Creation of a National Hero in India" by Sushma Jansari explores the process of creating a national hero and its effects. The author focuses on Chandragupta Maurya, the founder of the Maurya dynasty in northern India around 320 BC. Due to the scarcity of reliable information about Chandragupta, interpretations of his story vary greatly. The article discusses the influence of Graeco-Roman sources, colonial historiography, and Indian nationalist perspectives on the portrayal of Chandragupta as a hero. It also examines how Chandragupta has been depicted in art, literature, and popular culture in India since the 1940s. The author critically engages with the distortions of historical facts and biases found in contemporary works. However, the article could have provided a clearer analysis of the broader historiographical trends and the politicization of India's past. [Extracted from the article]

Media consumption includes a lot of movies. Film and culture interact in complex ways. Although art is meant to challenge established structures, mainstream Bollywood's profit-driven objective sometimes requires it to fulfil specific promises to a wide audience, minimizing disruption of traditional conceptions. A recent Indian film offers promise, though not much. They dare to raise social taboos to challenge normative beliefs. Sameer Sanjay Vidwans' Satyaprem Ki Katha and Behzad Khambata's A Thursday offer a fresh take on the topics of date rape and the failures of the system in addressing the pleas of survivors, highlighting concerns of neglect and conspiracy. This study analysed films about rape and related issues and compared them to real-life data. The study also involves an examination of how society attributes rape instances and the experiences of survivors. It asserts that the Bollywood business has just started undertaking initiatives to create a platform for discussing taboo issues that have previously been devoid of free discussion. The observation suggests that contemporary films focusing on taboo issues are grabbing larger audiences and thus achieving commercial success, in contrast to their predecessors. This also signifies a shift in contemporary culture and attitude towards rapes and related occurrences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Kung fu films made in Hong Kong and Taiwan are one of the most influential film references for male youth audiences around Africa, but despite their influence, their circulation around the continent has only rarely been studied. This essay addresses this gap by analysing the long-term impact of kung fu films on street gang culture in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire. Kung fu films began to circulate in the country the 1970s. They were screened in Abidjan numerous popular neighbourhood theatre halls along Indian films and American B-movies. Their emphasis on fighting bare hands, the discipline of the body and the revolt to forms of authority perceived as oppressive made them popular among young viewers, who took explicit inspiration from them and began practicing martial arts. The street gang movement which emerged from these influences, known as the 'Ziguéhi', became one of the most influential in recent Ivorian history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scientific studies of the elements that influence the box office performance of Indian films have generally concentrated on post-production elements, such as those discovered after a film has been completed or released, and notably for Bollywood films. Only fewer studies have looked at regional film industries and pre-production factors, which are elements that are known before a decision to greenlight a film is made. This study looked at Indian films using natural language processing and machine learning approaches to see if they would be profitable in the pre-production stage. We extract movie data and English subtitles (as an approximation to the screenplay) for the top five Indian regional film industries: Bollywood, Kollywood, Tollywood, Mollywood, and Sandalwood, as they make up a major portion of the Indian film industry's revenue. Subtitle Vector (Sub2Vec), a Paragraph Vector model trained on English subtitles, was used to embed subtitle text into 50 and 100 dimensions. The proposed approach followed a two-stage pipeline. In the first stage, Return on Investment (ROI) was calculated using aggregated subtitle embeddings and associated movie data. Classification models used the ROI calculated in the first step to predicting a film's verdict in the second step. The optimal regressor–classifier pair was determined by evaluating classification models using F 1 -score and Cohen's Kappa scores on various hyperparameters. When compared to benchmark methods, our proposed methodology forecasts box office success more accurately. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the Indian sports film as a category that gains popularity after the economic reforms of the 1990s. Influenced by the Hollywood sports film and global neoliberal ideals, these films incorporate local ideological influences and contribute to the prevailing discourse about sport in India. While mainstream films convey dominant values associated with sport, there are films which challenge these notions. This study examines two such films, Mukkabaaz (2017) and Sudani from Nigeria (2018), which carry subversive potential against hegemonic conceptions of individual, community, nation and merit, and offer an alternate understanding of sport and its role in society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Indian superhero films, the superheroes migrate to cities. Indian cinema has always tried to emulate the stylish superheroes of the west like Spiderman, Batman, and various characters of marvel comics which take the audiences to space, time travel, glossy VFX, and unbelievable stunts. [Extracted from the article]

Indian Hindi language sports drama films centered on cricket function as performative documentaries depicting the lives, accomplishments, and trajectories of cricketers playing for the India men's national cricket team, also known as Team India or the Men in Blue. These films, as cultural artifacts, are embedded in the establishment of a homogeneous episteme that consistently fails to offer alternatives to unsustainable development and pluralism of knowledge. Their persistent renditions of hegemonic masculinity and the gendered structure of cricket shape the politics of representation, positioning women of all classes, castes, and ethnicities as "others" in the sphere of mediated sport. In this regard, the Indian Hindi-language biographical sports drama film Shabaash Mithu (2022), directed by Srijit Mukherji and streaming on Netflix, serves as the first feasible approach to display the inspirational and empowering journey of Mithali Dorai Raj, the former Test and ODI (One Day International) captain of the India women's national cricket team. In this paper, we argue that delinking and unlearning the dominant episteme associated with the representation of cricket in Indian Hindi films brings forth an episteme that can make the cultural representations comprehensive. In doing so, we analyze the multifaceted visual epistemic representations and establish that Mithali Raj and her team not only experience the subjugations of epistemic hegemony but also delink those and make their episteme visible in layered ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Throughout the world, patriarchy has had a long and dominant presence in shaping power dynamics and gender relations. The manifestation of patriarchal ideology is complex and multifaceted and its influence can be observed in various aspects of life, within families and beyond. Patriarchal norms have become so deeply ingrained and normalized in society that both men and women conform to them almost instinctively. While feminist movements have tried to break the shackles of patriarchy, the process has never been complete. As such, patriarchy continue to strive in newer forms and through different agents. Cutting across the intersections of caste, class and sexuality, the article attempts to take a critical look at how women today traverse the conditions of patriarchy in India. The gender analysis of the Netflix-released Hindi film Qala investigates how patriarchy operates within and beyond the family. Using a backward narrative and locating the story in the India of pre-independent times, Qala represents the gendered society of India at a time when the world was witnessing a surge of feminist movements across nations. Yet by going back in time, we argue, the filmmaker very cleverly tries to dismantle the claims of progress and gender consciousness in 21st century India. By doing so, the filmmaker perhaps attempts to comment that the very structures of patriarchy that existed earlier are still relevant and glaring in the many instances of suppression and discrimination that exist in the India of today. The article therefore offers a critical reading of the Indian film Qala and the baggage it carries of patriarchal bias in society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

India is widely known as the biggest producer of films, now globally known with the portmanteau "Bollywood." India also grabs the media attention for another reason—climate change. In 2015, The New York Times published an op-ed with a cartoon showing India as the proverbial "elephant" blocking the progress at the Paris Climate Change Conference. With the staggering number of films India produces and the steady increase in climate change-related disasters that India faces, the critics embraced the film Kadvi Hawa (literally, Dark Wind or Bitter Wind, 2017) as the "pioneering" film raising the critical issue of climate change. However, the issues raised in the movie were amply dealt with in several other Indian films in the last several decades. This article is a survey of Indian films that have shown or dealt with nature, environment, or climate starting from the 1940s till the present time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spatiality and the spatial turn in cultural studies and media theory have critically influenced academic dialogues and the analysis of texts in contemporary discourses. In this context, the paper attempts to apply the discourse of spatiality to read into the family spaces in the New Generation Malayalam film narratives, holding the view that diegetic spaces in these films, directly and indirectly, attempt at foregrounding and subverting the normalisation of reproductive heteronormativity which had resulted in the gendered storytelling practices. To engage critically with the category of diegetic spatiality, two representational New Generation Malayalam films, Bangalore Days(2014) and Kumbalangi Nights(2019) are explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on representation of horror through cinema from realistic to imaginative and mentions specter of genocide, war and calamity that have seized beyond grips of rational sensibilities. Topics discussed include film "The Evil Dead" and " Saving Private Ryan" that have preyed fear to unearth understanding of uncanny encased within subconscious, how horror films have mutated into subgenres of interweaving comedy and horror and reading of genre classification of Indian cinema.

Year 2021–22 was celebrated as the birth centenary of Satyajit Ray. The Film Finance Corporation (FFC) and National Film Development Corporation (NFDC) were two of his important financiers and producers. Ray's Charulata (1964), Nayak (1965), and Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne (1968) were financed by the FFC. NFDC produced some of his later films, viz. Ghare Baire (1984), Ganashatru (1989), and Agantuk (1992). This article remembers Ray by recalling the Corporation's support towards and celebration of the Master's films. It revisits Ray's views on Indian films, New Cinema movement of the 1970s, and films and audience in general with a view to highlight his curious relationship with the alternative cinema movement of India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the discussion on considerable body of research devoted to understanding the distinctiveness of Indian cinema. Topics include focusing on the significance of the technically produced disembodied voice or on the "overwhelming" importance of song and dance in the marketing and financing of films; and mapping their protean circulation in other media forms such as cell phones, television, music videos, and reality shows.

Ahmet Gürata's manuscript is a comprehensive archival work that sheds a light on Turkish cinema from the earlier period through to the productive years in the 1960s with a focus on cross-cultural interactions. Even though the films produced in this period had Turkish names, most of them were adaptations or remakes of Hollywood, Egyptian or Indian films. After analyzing the alterations of international films in distribution and exhibition in the first part of the book, Gürata shifts his focus to the remakes that were mostly produced in the 1960s. [Extracted from the article]

The Journal of Media Ethics has published a collection of case studies and commentaries that address various ethical issues in media. The topics covered include ethics in documentary films in the United States, sexual violence in Indian films, managing reader feedback in news comments, and Bulgarian media coverage of COVID. These commentaries provide valuable perspectives on international ethical concerns and can be compared with previous issues for further analysis. [Extracted from the article]

In India, a popular trope is adapting cultural myths and religious iconographies into visceral images of the monster in literary and visual representations. Cinematic representations of the Indian monster are modelled on existing folklore narratives and religious tales where the idea of the monster emerges from cultural imagination and superstitions of the land. Since it rationalizes several underlying archetypes in which gods are worshipped in their monstrous identities and disposition, the trope of the monster is used in cinema to indicate the transformation from an ordinary human figure to a monstrous human Other. This paper examines cinematic adaptations of monster figures in Malayalam cinema, the South Indian film industry of Kerala. The cultural practice of religious rituals that worship monstrous gods is part of the collective imagination of the land of Kerala through which films represent fearsome images of transformed humans. This article argues that cultural monsters are human subjects that take inspiration from mythical monster stories to perform in a terrifying way. Their monstrous disposition is a persona that is both a powerful revelation of repressed desires and a manifestation of the resistance against certain cultural fears associated with them. The analysis of several Malayalam films, such as Kaliyattam (1997) Manichithrathazhu (1993) and Ananthabhadram (2005), reveals how film performance adapts mythological narrative elements to create new cultural intertexts of human monsters that are psychotically nuanced and cinematically excessive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the circulation and reception of Indian media (including films and more recently television series) in the majority Muslim city of Tamale, Northern Ghana. This includes the arrival of Hindi films during the late 1950s, the subsequent (short-lived) circulation of Bollywood films in the early 1990s, and the more recent arrival of contemporary Indian television serials in the 2010s. In charting histories of these three regionally linked transnational media flows, this article complicates "linear" experiences of Indian media in Northern Ghana. Though Tamale's Dagbamba viewers understand these three media flows as regionally linked, they are sensitive to changes in format, narrative, plot, and style taking place in Indian film and television over time. For over sixty years, Indian media flows have gained traction, broken down, restarted, and flowed in "feedback loops", dependent on the ways in which Indian media reflect, align with, and at times depart from Dagbamba conservative cultural and religious values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inclusive education is defined as an approach which supports learning together through intra and interindividual education, information retrieval and inter-individual education, knowledge acquisition and differences among individuals. In this context, not only students with special needs, but also all groups within the society without cultural, social and economic discrimination, benefit from inclusive education right as one of the basic human rights. In this study, the 2018 Indian film "Hichki" was analyzed with the content analysis method. In the film, the experiences of a teacher with stuttering disability with her socio-economically disadvantaged are described. Sub-themes were determined under the themes of 'attitudes', 'equal opportunities' and 'teaching' in the categories of inclusive education, and examples of themes from the film were examined. As a result, it was determined that examples of „Respect for individual differences‟, „dealing with negative prejudices‟, „overcoming obstacles‟, „realizing strengths‟, „goal setting‟ and „differentiated curricula‟, existed in the film. In this context, the film is suggested is to be watched by the education faculty and teachers for educational purposes. In addition, the film can contribute to social awareness about inclusive education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2013 recriminalization of homosexuality in India after the Delhi High Court had read down the anti-sodomy law in 2009. The verdict cannot be simplistically seen as a backward move. To say that it moves the country backwards or that the country is going back in time because of the said step is to fall into the trap of heteronormative prioritization. The recriminalization of homosexuality has to be seen as a violent erasure and disabling of queer narrativization of time in India. This paper presents an analysis of Sudhanshu Saria's film, Loev (2015) to examine how queer citizen-subjects navigate the politics of invisibilization and hyper-visibilization in post-2013 India. The paper proposes the lens of Probability to examine the queer experience of how 'now' is occupied differently by way of structures of ambiguity. Probability can be said to be the space of slippages where heteronormative performances are used to temporarily and repeatedly hoodwink society to make possible a queer 'now'. The paper explores the concept of Probability in relation to temporality and visibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Exposure to tobacco imagery in films causes young people to start smoking. Popular Indian films contain high levels of tobacco imagery, but those that do are required by law to display onscreen health warnings when smoking imagery occurs and to include other health promotion messaging before and during the film. We report a prospective cohort study of incident smoking in relation to exposure to film tobacco imagery and anti-tobacco messaging in a cohort of children in southern India. Methods: We carried out a one-year longitudinal follow up questionnaire survey in 2018 of a cohort of 39,282 students in grades 6, 7 and 8 (aged between 10 and 15 years) in schools in the Udupi district of Karnataka State in India who participated in a 2017 cross-sectional study of exposure to smoking in films and ever smoking status. Results: We obtained usable linked data in 2018 from 33,725 of the 39,282 (86%) participants with data from 2017. Incident smoking was reported by 382 (1.1%) participants. After adjusting for age, sex and common confounders significantly associated with incident smoking there was no significant independent effect of exposure to film smoking, either as a binary (Odds Ratio 1.6, 95% Confidence Interval (CI) 0.5 to 4.9) or as a graded variable, on smoking uptake. An exploratory analysis indicated that the presence of on-screen health warnings that complied fully with Indian law was associated with a significantly lower odds of smoking uptake (Odds Ratio 0.8 (0.6 to 1.0, p = 0.031) relative to the same exposure sustained in absence of compliant warnings. Conclusion: Exposure to tobacco imagery in Indian films was not associated with a significantly increased risk of incident smoking in South Indian children. While it is possible that this finding is a false negative, it is also possible that the effect of film exposure has been attenuated by the presence of on-screen health warnings or other Indian tobacco-free film rules. Our findings therefore support the wider implementation of similar tobacco-free film measures in other countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Eelam Tamils have a growing connection with Indian Tamils through shared language, cultural heritage, history, and cosmology, despite not having a shared geography or homeland. This paper contributes to understanding this peculiar connection by focusing on the cultural impacts of Indian Tamil films on Eelam Tamil refugees resettled in Australia in the 1980s and 1990s. Building on the existing scholarship on pan-Tamil identity, memory, and film, the paper asks: how did consuming Tamil films affect Eelam Tamils' cultural identities in their refugee resettlement? Transcultural memory is used as a framework to examine this interaction and the multi-focal identities and orientations among Eelam Tamils towards pan-Tamilness. Tamil refugees used film in a novel way to recall difficult memories of the pressures felt by a young war generation to sustain their cultural heritage while adjusting to the cultural norms of Australia. Consuming films become formative to reconstructing their cultural identities and enables the possibilities for exploring the cultural linkages and disconnections that constitute the heterogeneity of pan-Tamil subjectivities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I argue for the necessity of studying the portrayal of technological infrastructures in popular cinema. Cinema provided a venue within which the potentialities of technological infrastructures could be codified, challenged and (irregularly) absorbed into everyday practice—a process that was especially fraught in postcolonial societies like India. I combine an analysis of the changes in Indian telecommunications policy in the 1990s with close readings of the telephone's portrayal in two South Indian comedy films, Hello Pakkiram (1990) and Money (1993). These films imagined the telephone as a technology which undergirded a "middle-class" ethos which valued financial security above explicit moral commitment, in contrast to the explicit heroism of the "mass films" that shaped an earlier era of South Indian cinema. I conclude by reaffirming the necessity of thinking through mediations of technological infrastructures to gain more nuanced critical purchase on their place in our everyday lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay analyses the changing politics of beauty labour and female body image in Indian cinema. It begins by discussing how beauty, a social capital for women, is a measuring rod with which their bodies are both assessed and objectified. It claims that cinema being a visual medium demands some aesthetic capital from actors, and the beauty of leading ladies portrayed on screen often adds to the spectacle. Focusing on mainstream Bollywood films produced especially over the last two decades, this essay examines narratives upholding the beauty ideal both as a cinematic necessity and also as a plot point. Tracing developments in cinematic representations of female beauty, it then examines select postmillennial films (both mainstream Bollywood as well as regional productions) to suggest that a maturing trend in representing female bodies is emerging in Indian cinema where instead of the prettified heroine one increasingly encounters protagonists who refuse to agonize under beauty labour. Finally, it argues that owing to global debates and critical feminist interventions on female body image, a radical shift is palpable in postmillennial Indian films which showcase women who either reject or redefine the politics of beauty labour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bimal Roy's I Do Bigha Zamin i ("Two-thirds of an acre of land"[1]), made in [12], was perhaps the first Indian film to win accolades across Europe, China and Russia, in addition to getting several awards in India.[2] Even today it is recognized as one of the most realistic and socialistic of all Indian films. While praising this film for its realism and for creating a "seismic impact", Raheja says that in the end Shambhu lost his land yet the film gives us hope, as the family retains its humanity. THE AFTERMATH Although Bimal Roy had earlier directed films in both Bengali and Hindi, I Do Bigha Zamin i (DBZ) was the first Hindi film that he also produced. Just a couple of years after DBZ, Satyajit Ray made his first film, I Pather Panchali i ([21]), with a similar theme, a film that is also known as a landmark of Indian cinema in its own right, and is as powerful today as when it was first screened. [Extracted from the article]

The dual edged implications of the introduction of English literary studies notwithstanding – the presentation of a fresh cultural perspective and the complete cultural takeover of colony – the pride and fascination of the British with the works of Jane Austen has had a deep impact on cultural production in India and its diaspora. Down the years, keeping pace with changing times and backed by technological developments, the Jane Austen-facilitated coming together of the two nations and two cultures, has seen several multilingual, multicultural screen adaptations of the Austen novels for both television and the big screen: Sense and Sensibility by Tamil cinema as Kandukondain Kandukondain; Pride and Prejudice as Trishna, a serialized Hindi adaptation for Indian national television, and later, for the big screen by a British Indian in English and Hindi as the internationally acclaimed Bride and Prejudice/Balle Balle Amritsar to L.A. and more recently, Emma by mainstream Bollywood in Hindi as Aisha. The essay broaches an analysis of the nuancing that takes place in the interstices between the word and the visual art forms and of the complexities arising from this interface. The complex agenda of the adaptive engagement underlying this vibrant colloquy between two cultures, between two mediums is interesting enough, but the added dynamic of a hybrid cosmopolitanism that is sometimes gratifying and sometimes problematic, makes the study even more challenging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on ethnographic research, in this article I suggest that with the consumption of Indian film and film-mediated culture and modernity, India's cultural hegemony and class inequalities in Bangladesh are reinforced. Following Bourdieu's (1984) concept of "distinction," I explain how middle-class values and status are attached to Hindi popular cinema in Bangladesh; as a result, Hindi film and film-mediated culture and modernity are considered to be tasteful, polished, well executed, and technically savvy compared to Bangladeshi commercial films, which are seen as poor people's entertainment. The hegemony of Bollywood films in Bangladesh works through the consumption of the production and representational values that are attached to film's story, music, dance, fashion, and style, as well as the people involved in it. While consuming Bollywood film and film-promoted culture and modernity, the middle class reinforces Indian cultural hegemony, alienating them from Bangladeshi commercial films that they define as low-grade, crass, and lacking in production values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Media consumption habits of diaspora populations have evolved significantly over the past decade with the arrival of digital streaming platforms. Web-based streaming options for popular Hindi films are very diverse, with multiple content providers offering large libraries of Indian films to their consumers outside India. This study distinguishes between two different models of diasporic media consumption aided by digital technology. First, there are major US-based streaming services, whose global expansion necessitates the continuous growth of content in languages such as Hindi, Tamil, and Telugu. Second, this analysis identifies television networks primarily operating in India, which have launched online streaming platforms in order to make their catalogues available for customers outside India. Which infrastructural advances or changes in industry practices have been instrumental in making this development feasible? How are the recent trends in transnational distribution, exhibition, and reception spheres reflected in popular Hindi films? In order to explore these questions, this study identifies various curatorial strategies (an emphasis on exclusive original content, multi-episodic works, films in regional Indian languages) and analyzes two case studies that have attracted a sizable diasporic viewership through streaming platforms (Kapoor and Sons by Shakun Batra from 2016 and Lust Stories , a 2018 Netflix anthology film by four directors). These films are discussed particularly in terms of their groundbreaking portrayals of non-normative sexuality, diaspora experience, and socioeconomic structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I am grateful for the responses to my essay on "repeat viewing" by Kabir, Mazumdar, and Wong, each of whom offers a sympathetic critical response, pointing to ways of elaborating and complicating my argument about the relationship of repetition to difference in Bollywood films. In this comment I stress issues of genre, history, and context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I investigate Indian filmmaking that emerges from the encounter between urban experience and documentary practice to examine how Indian feminist critique responds to neoliberal discourses of urbanism and gender. I consider the analysis of urbanism in Sameera Jain's documentary My Own City (2011) which depicts how women become "out of place" in neoliberal cities by focusing on the gendering of urban temporality, mobility and belonging, in relation to which women's subjectivities and performances are mediated in the nation's capital New Delhi. In the second section, I conceptualize the use of a deliberate strategy of place-specific performance in the film as "emplacement" which enables a visible field of gender performances and observable mutations of both, subject and space. In contrast to documentary staging or re-enactment, conceptualized as emplacement, the audiovisual recording of complex relations of "becoming" allows place-specific ecologies of material, sensory and social environments to be considered together in the construction of gender. Following the film, the paper outlines provocations regarding critical ways of conceptualizing place in how cultural forms like documentary represent gender in relation to geographies and environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article summarises my doctoral thesis on the multiplex movie theatre in post-liberalisation India, whose rise has fostered radical changes in Indian popular cinema. The thesis explores the intersection and interaction of this encounter, where the psychology of architecture influences the cinematic landscape, binding architectural topography to spectatorial life. Cinema is spatially moored to the cinema hall, and even though present-day digital technology makes its relocation to spaces other than the cinema hall possible, the primary intent of cinema production is the cinema hall, its exhibition implicated in a publicness that informs its experience. In exploring how the particular spatial dynamics and imaginative matrix of the multiplex space informs its cinematic narratives, the thesis attempts to examine, through a selection of 'multiplex films', the configuration of a new imagination, birthed by the particular social, economic and cultural vectors of the multiplex experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the crucial role of operatic theatre tradition in representing the mountain culture of Uttarakhand, a region that became the twenty-seventh state of the Republic of India in 2000. Uttarakhand culture is extremely diverse, so in this article I solely examine the performance practices of the Kumaoni community and, in particular, a Kumaoni opera called Rajula Malushahi, which is based on a folk mountain legend. This article problematizes and expands the range of influence of mountain cultures by drawing on a version of this story by Indian director Amit Saxena, performed on 17 January 2017, at the Sri Ram Centre for Performing Arts, Delhi. The first part of the article traces the emergence of the Kumaoni opera tradition and its ability to articulate the voice of these mountain people. In the second and third parts, I examine the dramaturgical practices of Rajula Malushahi and demonstrate how it diverged from mainstream Indian dramaturgies, and how this voiced the anxieties and dilemmas of peripheral mountain cultures. These strategic diversions reimagined the idea of mountains and the female gender. I argue that Kumaoni operatic theatre tradition, which is based on folk narratives, continually connects mountains, human bodies and modern environmental discourses, and thus offers a critique of entrenched modern divisions between humans and non-humans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this interview with Judith Misrahi-Barak and Nicole Thiara, Jayan K. Cherian discusses his work as an independent filmmaker in India and the USA, his artistic and political commitment, and the challenges he has faced with the Central Board of Film Certification in India after the release of his first feature film Papilio Buddha (2013), which focuses on Dalit land struggles in Kerala, and again with his second feature film KaBodyscapes (2016). The interview explores how holding a dual status as an American citizen and an Overseas Citizen of India makes his situation more complex because it offers him both the freedom and constraints of being a permanent outsider. The discussion of Papilio Buddha and its representation of the Dalit land struggle is the focus of the interview. He also speaks about his intended audience(s) and the way he works on location with his crews. Since Cherian is a poet and a writer as well as a filmmaker, he explains his choices for specific media, in the particular contexts in which he positions himself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the discourse on terrorism viz-aviz contemporary Bollywood cinema and the way it depicts the image of Pakistan. Since their independence in1947, Pakistan and India have fought a number of wars and the relations between the two countries remained strained. Amidst political conflict, some Bollywood films portray Pakistan in a negative daylight. Mumbai attacks of November 26, 2008 further escalated the tensions when India accused Pakistan. The film Phantom is an example of this scenario. By analyzing this film, this study attempts to understand the propaganda messages and the stereotypical notions associated with Pakistan in the Indian propaganda films. Discourse analysis has been used as research methodology for this study. Main focus was the dialogues used in the film with some minor discussion on the visual elements. The analysis shows that Bollywood has shown Pakistani people as extremists. It also depicted Pakistan's top intelligence agency--ISI (Inter Services Intelligence)--as a horrific organization which not only protects, supports and control the terrorists but is also involved in terrorist activities against India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abandoning the traditional tendency to focus on the exotic character of Arrian's Indikē, this paper explores how Arrian's work contributes to the delineation of Alexander's character. By drawing from modern theories of suspense, this study argues that Arrian's aim in relating the Macedonian fleet's adventurous voyage in the Indian Sea was to invite his readers through a suspenseful narrative to sympathize with Nearchus's and Alexander's concern about the fate of the troops. The Indikē can thus partly be seen as Arrian's defense of Alexander against those who accused him of neglecting his troops' safety on his return from India to Babylon in 325 B.C.E. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article highlights use of biopics as a form of representation of life narrative of Phoolan Devi, the protagonist of Bandit Queen, film. Topics discussed include exploration of the cinematic representation of banditry in India; views on brief profile of Phoolan Devi regarding work and life; and mentions Eric Hobsbawm's social bandit model to analyze the transformation of lives such as Phoolan Devi into bandits.

This article offers introductory remarks on the position of the Dalit in Indian cinema. It starts with the observation that the Indian film industry is an inherently caste-based, biased, mechanised product of technological industrialisation in which Dalit inclusion is not a moral concern. The mainstream film industry in India delivers the desires and principles of market and society by excluding a Dalit framework outright—a problem now being addressed by the entry of an explicitly Dalit cinema. By briefly looking at two films, Fandry (2013) and Sairat (2016), both written and directed by Dalit film-maker Nagraj Manjule, I offer a critical reading of ‘Dalit Cinema’. Taking the work of Manjule, a maverick film-maker who is establishing a new discourse of Dalit-centred socio-culturism, I demonstrate the extent to which caste narratives are absent in the Indian film industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]