Sensory Screens, Digitized Desires: Dancing Rasa From Bombay Cinema To Reality TV

Bombay cinema incorporated songs, dances, choreography, staging, and costumes from a variety of traditional forms to mark a modern national identity. The pioneering figure for using dance in films was Uday Shankar in his experimental film Kalpana. Bombay’s spectacular song-and-dance cinema then moves through films such as Chandralekha to contemporary Bollywood and its byproducts such as dance reality shows. The search for aesthetic modernity in India is embodied in the concept of “desire” as it evolved from traditional aesthetics to contemporary culture and new media technology; to uncover its evolution from Bombay cinema to reality show, I first analyze the historically transforming cinematography and content through a few select musicals. Secondly, I trace the emergence of the “Item” numbers in Bollywood and their relationship to music videos; and third, I explore the current expressions of screendance on reality shows in India as expressions of class mobility and democratization of cultur

In God’s Land: Cinematic Affect, Animation and the Perceptual Dilemmas of Slow Violence

In this paper, I argue that Indian independent filmmaker Pankaj Rishi Kumar\u27s documentary In God’s Land (2012) blends animation and live-action to illuminate the destructive nuances of postcolonial literary scholar, Rob Nixon\u27s notion of slow violence. In turning to cinema, I also suggest that In God’s Land’s “aesthetic strategies” further eco-film scholarship’s recent interests in animation, which have tended to highlight the mode\u27s feel good affect. I draw attention to In God\u27s Land\u27s hybrid of dark, discordant animation spectacle interspliced in the documentary live-action to articulate the potential of eco-animation outside of this affect. Ultimately, the film not only draws attention to animation’s non-playful affect—its potentials and dilemmas, but I also suggest that reading such a film adds postcolonial understandings of cinema beyond the Western/Japanese center on with eco-animation scholars have so far focused

Film policy and the emergence of the cross-cultural: exploring crossover cinema in Flanders (Belgium)

With several films taking on a cross-cultural character, a certain ‘crossover trend’ may be observed within the recent upswing of Flemish cinema (a subdivision of Belgian cinema). This trend is characterized by two major strands: first, migrant and diasporic filmmakers finally seem to be emerging, and second, several filmmakers tend to cross the globe to make their films, hereby minimizing links with Flemish indigenous culture. While paying special attention to the crucial role of film policy in this context, this contribution further investigates the crossover trend by focusing on Turquaze (2010, Kadir Balci) and Altiplano (2009, Peter Brosens & Jessica Woodworth)

The State of the Guitar in Kathmandu

The thriving guitar scene in Kathmandu is not well known outside of the country, and particularly not in the West. It has also not been the topic of much recent scholarship. It has been assumed that for Nepalis the guitar, as a foreign instrument, represents freedom and modernity; but, is this true, and what else might it signify to Nepali guitarists themselves? This article gives an overview of the history of the guitar in Kathmandu by drawing on both published scholarship and interviews conducted by the authors with twelve prominent Nepalese guitarists and guitar educators to establish the current state and future outlook of the guitar in Nepal. Findings suggest that, in addition to freedom and modernity, the guitar is connected with individualism, and is becoming naturalized and less foreign than it used to be

Articulation(s) of Culture(s): Mobilizing knowledge, ecological justice, and media convergence

This paper draws on articulation(s) as a multi-method countermethodology in the design of educational research. We use this form of critical\ud inquiry to examine ecological literacies and digital epistemologies associated with\ud Dow’s 2006 worldwide advertising campaign, “The Human Element”.\ud Articulation(s) draw from research that continues to evolve reflexively and that\ud openly questions deterministic institutional explanations. Our interpretation of\ud articulation(s) include(s) critical processes for gathering, analyzing, and\ud interpreting data. A critique of Dow‘s “The Human Element” ad is provided as an\ud example of how multimodal forms of information have been mobilized,\ud (re)presented, (re)mixed, and (re)mediated using media convergence, how various\ud points of view intersect formations of everyday digital media networks, and how\ud communication practices entail subtle and complex relationships associated with\ud social and political meanings and values. Our focus is on social justice issues of\ud ecology as mobilized through media convergence. We argue that an integrated and\ud negotiated approach to critical inquiry linking ecological justice through education\ud can help researchers, teachers, and students analyze conditions of culture(s) within\ud the contexts of complex political and social conditions that are prevalent in most\ud societies

Portrayal of women in Indian Mass Media:An Investigation

Media's role towards women is becoming the growing concern of the feminist writers, basically regarding participation, performances and portrayal of women. Because different circumstances relating to media's role towards portraying the fair sex have opened up a new angle by leaps and bounds to think precisely about it