India’s New Independent Cinema

Dr.　Ashvin Immanuel Devasundaram is Lecturer in World Cinema at Queen Mary, University of London, and author of India’s New Independent Cinema: Rise of the Hybrid (Routledge, 2016). Ashvin was on the advisory panel for BFI India on Film – part of the UK-India Year of Culture 2017. He is Programming Adviser and Associate Director of the UK Asian Film Festival – London (UKAFF), former Creative Director and founder of the Edinburgh Asian Film Festival (EAFF) and a BBC Academy Expert Voice in Cultural Studies and Visual Arts. Apart from several publications, including the co-edited anthology South Asian Diasporic Cinema and Theatre: Re-visiting Screen and Stage in the New Millennium (Rawat Publications, 2017), Ashvin has delivered an array of international presentations and lectures. These include keynote speeches at the Cinema For All (British Federation of Film Societies) Community Cinema Conference 2017 and the Annual Dadasaheb Phalke Memorial Lecture 2015 in London. Ashvin directed the documentary film Movies, Memories, Magic (2018) charting the London-based South Asian diaspora’s memories of cinema.

Introduction

Part 1

1. Bollywood and the Cinemas of India: The Story so Far

2. The Meta-Hegemony: Leviathan Bollywood and Lilliputian Indies

3. The Anatomy of the Indies

4. Avenues of Indie Funding, Distribution and Exhibition

5. Interstitial Indies Interrogating India’s Double Narrative

6. Running Along with Scissors: Censorship and Regulation

Part 2: Case Studies

7. Rapping in Double Time: Gandu's Subversive Time of Liberation

8. Dhobi Ghat: The Marginal in the Mumbai Mainstream

9. Peepli Live: Neoliberal Capital, Media ‘Knowledge’ and Political Power

10. All the World’s a Ship: Broken Binaries and Hyperlinked Heterotopias in Ship of Theseus

11. A Cinematic Quartet Conjuring Ghosts of Nation: Harud, Haider, The Lunchbox and I Am

Conclusion: Charting the Ship’s Course