India’s New Independent Cinema: Rise of the Hybrid

309 Pages·2016·2.211 MB·English

by  Ashvin Immanuel Devasundaram

India’s New Independent Cinema
This book breaks new ground in what has become a field of cliché: Indian
Cinema. It is an insightful peek into what Parallel cinema in India has
evolved into. A must read for anyone studying the subject, or just passionate
about cinema.
—Renji Matthews, University of Sharjah, UAE
This is the first-ever book on the rise of the new wave of independent Indian
films that is revolutionising Indian cinema. Contemporary scholarship on
Indian cinema so far has focused asymmetrically on Bollywood, India’s dom-
inant cultural export. Reversing this trend, this book provides an in-depth
examination of the burgeoning independent Indian film sector. It locates the
new ‘Indies’ as a glocal hybrid film form – global in aesthetic and local in
content. These films critically engage with a diverse socio-political spectrum
of ‘state of the nation’ stories: from farmer suicides and disenfranchised
urban youth and migrant workers to monks turned anti-corporation animal
rights agitators. This book provides comprehensive analyses of definitive
Indie New Wave films, including Peepli Live (2010), Dhobi Ghat (2010),
The Lunchbox (2013) and Ship of Theseus (2013). It explores how subver-
sive Indies, such as polemical postmodern rap-musical Gandu (2010), trans-
gress conventional notions of ‘traditional Indian values’ and collide with
state censorship regulations. This timely analysis shows how the new Indies
have emerged from a middle space between India’s globalising present and
traditional past. This book draws on in-depth interviews with directors,
actors, academics and members of the Indian censor board; it is essential
reading for anyone seeking an insight into a current Indian film phenome-
non that could chart the future of Indian cinema.
Ashvin Immanuel Devasundaram has a PhD from Heriot-Watt University,
Edinburgh. He is currently Programming Adviser for the London Asian
Film Festival (LAFF) and Creative Director of the festival’s expansion to
other cities in the UK.
Routledge Advances in Film Studies
For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com.
18 European Civil War Films 25 Crossover Cinema
Memory, Conflict, Cross-Cultural Film from
and Nostalgia Production to Reception
Eleftheria Rania Edited by Sukhmani Khorana
Kosmidou
26 Spanish Cinema in the
19 The Aesthetics of Global Context
Antifascist Film Film on Film
Radical Projection Samuel Amago
Jennifer Lynde Barker
27 Japanese Horror Films and
20 The Politics of Age Their American Remakes
and Disability in Translating Fear, Adapting
Contemporary Culture
Spanish Film Valerie Wee
Plus Ultra Pluralism
Matthew J. Marr 28 Postfeminism and Paternity in
Contemporary US Film
21 Cinema and Language Loss Framing Fatherhood
Displacement, Visuality Hannah Hamad
and the Filmic Image
Tijana Mamula 29 Cine-Ethics
Ethical Dimensions of
22 Cinema as Weather Film Theory, Practice, and
Stylistic Screens and Spectatorship
Atmospheric Change Edited by Jinhee Choi and
Kristi McKim Mattias Frey
23 Landscape and Memory in 30 Postcolonial Film: History,
Post-Fascist Italian Film Empire, Resistance
Cinema Year Zero Edited by Rebecca Weaver-
Giuliana Minghelli Hightower and Peter Hulme
24 Masculinity in the 31 The Woman’s Film of
Contemporary Romantic the 1940s
Comedy Gender, Narrative, and
Gender as Genre History
John Alberti Alison L. McKee
32 Iranian Cinema in a 41 The Western in the
Global Context Global South
Policy, Politics, and Form Edited by MaryEllen Higgins,
Edited by Peter Decherney and Rita Keresztesi, and Dayna
Blake Atwood Oscherwitz
33 Eco-Trauma Cinema 42 Spaces of the Cinematic Home
Edited by Anil Narine Behind the Screen Door
Edited by Eleanor Andrews,
34 American and Chinese- Stella Hockenhull, and Fran
Language Cinemas Pheasant-Kelly
Examining Cultural Flows
Edited by Lisa Funnell and 43 Spectacle in “Classical”
Man-Fung Yip Cinemas
Musicality and Historicity
35 American Documentary in the 1930s
Filmmaking in the Digital Age Tom Brown
Depictions of War in Burns,
Moore, and Morris 44 Rashomon Effects
Lucia Ricciardelli Kurosawa, Rashomon and
Their Legacies
36 Asian Cinema and the Use Edited by Blair Davis, Robert
of Space Anderson and Jan Walls
Interdisciplinary Perspectives
Edited by Lilian Chee and 45 Mobility and Migration in
Edna Lim Film and Moving
Image Art
37 Moralizing Cinema Cinema Beyond Europe
Film, Catholicism and Power Nilgün Bayraktar
Edited by Daniel Biltereyst and
Daniela Treveri Gennari 46 The Other in Contemporary
Migrant Cinema
38 Popular Film Music and Imagining a New Europe?
Masculinity in Action Guido Rings
A Different Tune
Amanda Howell 47 Horror Film and Affect
Towards a Corporeal Model
39 Film and the American of Viewership
Presidency Xavier Aldana Reyes
Edited by Jeff Menne and
Christian B. Long 48 India’s New Independent
Cinema
40 Hollywood Action Films and Rise of the Hybrid
Spatial Theory Ashvin Immanuel
Nick Jones Devasundaram
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India’s New Independent
Cinema
Rise of the Hybrid
Ashvin Immanuel Devasundaram
First published 2016
by Routledge
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and by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2016 Taylor & Francis
The right of Ashvin Immanuel Devasundaram to be identified as author of
this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78
of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
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from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Devasundaram, Ashvin Immanuel.
Title: India’s new independent cinema: rise of the hybrid / by Ashvin
Immanuel Devasundaram.
Description: New York: Routledge, 2016 | Series: Routledge advances in
film studies | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016003977
Subjects: LCSH: Motion picture industry—India. | Independent films—
India. | Motion pictures—India.
Classification: LCC PN1993.5.I8 D485 2016 | DDC 791.430954—dc23LC
record available at HYPERLINK “https://protect-us.mimecast.com/s/
lN5JBRUazbLgum” http://lccn.loc.gov/2016003977
ISBN: 978-1-138-18462-6 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-64501-8 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by codeMantra
For John, Mum, Dada, and Family
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Contents
List of Figures xi
List of Interviewees xiii
Acknowledgements xv
Introduction: Setting the Stage 1
PART I
Enter India’s New Indies
1 Bollywood and the Cinemas of India: The Story so Far 15
2 The Meta-Hegemony: Leviathan Bollywood and
Lilliputian Indies 32
3 The Anatomy of the Indies 60
4 Avenues of Indie Funding, Distribution and Exhibition 80
5 Interstitial Indies Interrogating India’s Double Narrative 109
6 Running with Scissors: Censorship and Regulation 125
PART II
Case Studies
7 Rapping in Double Time: Gandu’s Subversive Time
of Liberation 149
8 Dhobi Ghat: The Marginal in the Mumbai Mainstream 180
9 Peepli Live: Neoliberal Capital, Media ‘Knowledge’
and Political Power 201