Documentary films in India
Subtitle: critical aesthetics at work
By: Aparna Sharma, Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance, University of California, Los Angeles, USA
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Published: 2015
Place of publication: Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire; New York, NY
Language: eng
Number of pages: 276
ISBN-13: 9781137395436
Subjects: Documentary films; History and criticism; PERFORMING ARTS / Film & Video / Direction & Production; PERFORMING ARTS / Film & Video / History & Criticism
Description: "This book introduces the diverse practices of documentary films in India. It examines the oeuvres of three non-canonical practitioners: ethnographic filmmaker, David MacDougall; northeast India-based moving-image artists group, Desire Machine Collective; and avant-garde filmmaker and cinema philosopher, Kumar Shahani. Sharma offers in-depth analysis of these practitioners' distinct documentary methods and aesthetics, exploring how their oeuvres constitute a critical and self-reflexive approach to documentary-making in India. The book commences with an overview of the factors that have shaped the political contours of documentary-making in India, before introducing the select practitioners as a counter-point to the dominant and canonical tendencies of documentary films in India. Three sections of the book take up one filmmaker each, whose oeuvre is studied in-depth with a view to explore and articulate how the critical discourse and aesthetic strategies of their films evolve"--
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 256-263) and index.
Table of contents: title: Machine generated contents note:; title: Introduction PART I1. Constructing the Self, Constructing Others 2. New Boys at the Doon School 3. Gandhi's Children PART II 4. An Arrested Eye: Trauma and Becoming in Desire Machine Collective's Documentary Installations 5. Passage 6. Residue PART III 7. A Turn Towards the Classical: The Documentaries of Kumar Shahani 8. The Bamboo Flute Epilogue.