The Italianization of Bollywood Cinema: ad hoc films

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.In this article we explore the relationship between Italy and popular Hindi cinema in which the form and narrative structure of Bollywood films undergo profound changes. Bollywood films screened in Italy are modified and absorb, through a collage of images, traces of the Italian inheritance of neo-realist cinema. We use Bergson’s theory of time to study this phenomenon, which together with the theory of collage, will form the theoretical frame of a reflection on the dismemberment that these films undergo for the Italian screens. Their transformation appear to generate ad hoc Bollywood films. The analysis of the use that the Italian entertainment industry currently makes of Bollywood texts (by adapting these texts for their national audience) is pivotal to putting into perspective, on the one hand, the global phenomenon of aesthetic and cultural changes to Bollywood cinema and, on the other hand, the specificities of the encounter of this industry with the European panorama. The analysis of this phenomenon, filtered by the Italian entertainment industry, through the use of one specific case study, the film Jodhaa Akbar/Jodhaa Akbar (Gowariker 2008 Gowariker, A. 2008. Jodhaa Akbar. Ashutosh Gowariker Productions Pvt Ltd and UTV Motion Pictures. Mumbai., Ashutosh Gowariker Productions Pvt Ltd and UTV Motion Pictures), allows us to think about Bollywood films as re-framed by the globalization of this Indian industry

Bollywood’s variation on the firanginess theme: Song-and-dance sequences as heterotopic offbeats

This project branches out from the presentation at a selective small colloquium at Sonoma State University (California) that partially funded my stay in US, along with receiving the support of the CATH Research Centre.Song-and-dance sequences have widely been studied as disruptive elements in the narrative of popular Hindi cinema and as quintessential traits of this industry. While the utopic dimension of such musical intervals has largely been theorised, the aim of this article is to expand on this framework to articulate the heterotopic dimension of these interludes. Foucault’s concept of heterotopia allows further study of how song-and-dance sequences are elements responsible for communicating both social and cultural aspects. On a similar note, it must be mentioned that the use and representation of foreigners in Indian cinema dates back to its origins, when foreign actresses were often employed in films, replacing local performers. Through historical exploration, this paper will specifically investigate how song-and-dance sequences are important ‘malleable elements’ of the narrative, which are able to articulate identity and to discourse on the representation and articulation of firanginess in popular Hindi cinem

First Leicester Asian Film Festival

Co-organized the First Leicester Asian Film Festival to be held between the 16-19th March 2017 at Phoenix. Internal funding for the project was obtained from DMU Square Mile and DMU Local

Theorizing liminal cinema: Unsettling the transnational spaces of Italian Indian co-productions

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.This article seeks to provide a contribution to the contemporary writing on transnational cinema. By acknowledging the prolific literature that characterizes transnational cinema through specific categories of cultural and societal mobilization, and the writing on crossover cinema, this work aims to enter into a dialogue with the respective authors and propose a less structured approach to transnational mobilization. To study such mobilizations and its complex forms, co-production ventures were used as case studies to highlight the efforts of early international joint endeavours, and more recently, those of outsourcing agencies, as being nodes for changing forms of international collaborations. By focusing on Italian Indian co-produced films, this work situates co-production studies within the literature on transnational cinema, and unsettles fixed cinematic categories in favor of a more mobile and fluid paradigm. Hence, the term Liminal cinema is proposed to critically assess and emphasize the dynamics of the complex phenomenon of transnational cinema-in-motion

Second UK Asian Film Festival

The document attached is a Brochure of the festival organised this year and is part of the documentation of societal and cultural Impact.This is the Brochure of the Second UK Asian Film festival of which I am the Associate Director and that informs part of my research on Film festivals and the South Asian Subcontinent

On Exposing the Curatorial "us": Curatorial Notes #3

How can we create a collective curatorial experience? In this article, the author describes the use of montage to express a shared meaning in the face of similar and yet disjoined experiences of trauma

Film festival and the Rhythm of Social Inclusivity: The Fluid Spaces of London and Florence indian Film festivals

The aim of this article is to boldly present the creative, social and cultural influences on spaces and urban quarters, that fairly new Film Festival tendencies have produced, and consequently, how these venues can be thought to interlock with discourses on ethnic compartmentalization and fluidity of city spaces. In order to discuss the above, this paper intends to take the London Indian Film Festival and the Italian River to River Florence Indian Film Festival as case studies, both of which intend to give a voice to the abounding Indian film industry, well disconnected by the glamour and glitter of the more popular Hindi cinema, viz. Bollywood. By borrowing the notion of fluid modernity as introduced by Bauman, this paper intends to argue that spaces such as film festivals are not static events, but rather dynamic and socially including. Zygmunt Bauman introduced the notion of liquid modernity to better understand the condition of constant mobility and change in terms of relationships, identities and global economies within the contemporary society. Liquid modernity is here employed to discuss how film festival venues could be a creative-cultural device that activates social integration and redefines urban geographies. Through the notion of liquid modernity, film festivals are here intended to be framed as cursors for ethnic mobilization rejecting compartmentalization and substantiating that the construction of a durable and coherent identity over time and space becomes increasingly impossible. In this light, the final goal is to decode Film Festivals as a powerful cultural tool to allow a fluid understanding of the city space