Introductory description

This module is designed to enable the teaching of a research-led subject at Masters level. The precise content is flexible, but the learning outcomes remain consistent.

Module aims

Outline syllabus

This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.

Indian Cinemas: Cultures and Contestations
Week 1: Understanding Indian Cinema from Amateur Film in the British Raj to Films in Independent India
Screenings: The North West Frontier Province: An Introductory or Revision Film (James Fairgrieve, 1928)
Tins for India (Bimal Roy, 1941)
Do Bigah Zamin (Bimal Roy, 1953)
Week 2: Mother India: Creating a National Epic
Screening: Mother India (Mehboob Khan, 1957)
Week 3: Melodrama and Hindi cinema
Screening: Amar Akbar Anthony (Manmohan Desai, 1977)
Week 4: The Film Star and Indian Cinema
Screening: Sholay (Ramesh Sippy, 1975)
Week 5: Satyajit Ray and Rethinking Avant-Gardism
Screening: Ghaire-Baire (Satyajit Ray, 1984)
Week 6: Reading week
Week 7: Hatke and the Rise of the Neo-Noir in Indian Cinema
Screening: Jigarthanda (Karthik Subbaraj, 2014)
Week 8: ‘Lesbian and Indian’
Screening: Fire (Deepa Mehta, 1997)
Week 9: Gay Men in the Popular Hindi Film
Screening: Student of the Year (Karan Johar, 2012)
Week 10: From Cinema with Love: TV, Web, and Censorship
Screenings: Romil and Jugal (Nupur Asthana, 2017)
Sasuraal Gay-nda Fool (Nazar Battu Productions, 2016)
The Visit (Anouk #BoldisBeautiful, 2015)
Ka Bodyscapes (Jayan Cherian, 2016)

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• 1. Students will be able to interrogate and mobilise relevant theoretical and critical scholarship to course films and programmes, and select other appropriate case studies and frameworks.
• 2. Students will be able to offer critically and historically informed readings of films and television programmes relevant to the themes of the case study topic.
• 3. Students will be able to devise a research project of appropriately formulation and scope, through consultation with the module tutor.

Indicative reading list

1. Illustrative Bibliography
   Bhattacharya, R.R., 2007. A Man of Silence - Bimal Roy. Asian Cinema 18, 17–22. https://doi.org/10.1386/ac.18.1.17_1
   Bhugra, D., Kalra, G., Ventriglio, A., 2015. Portrayal of gay characters in Bollywood cinema. International Review of Psychiatry 27, 455–459. https://doi.org/10.3109/09540261.2015.1086320
   Chatterjee, G., 2002. Mother India, BFI film classics. British Film Institute, London.
   Datta, S., Bakshi, K., Dasgupta, R.K., 2015. The world of Rituparno Ghosh: texts, contexts and transgressions. South Asian History & Culture 6, 223.
   Dwyer, R., 2000. All you want is money, all you need is love. Cassell, London, pp. 115 – 129
   Dwyer, R., 2011. Zara Hatke (somewhat different): the new middle classes and the changing forms of Hindi cinema, in: Donner, H. (Ed.), Being Middle-Class in India: A Way of Life, Routledge Contemporary South Asia Series. Routledge, London ; New York, pp. 200–224.
   Dyer, Richard, 1979. Stars. London: British Film Institute. Second edition 1998
   Elsaesser, T., 1985. Tales of sound and fury: observations on the family melodrama, in: Nichols, B. (Ed.), Movies and Methods. Vol.2: An Anthology. University of California Press, Berkeley, Calif.; London, pp. 165–189.
   Gandhy, B., Thomas, R., 1991. Three Indian Film Stars, in: Gledhill, C. (Ed.), Stardom: Industry of Desire. Routledge, London; New York.
   Ganguly, K., 2010. Catastrophe and Utopia: Ghaire Baire, or the Household Goddess, in: Cinema, Emergence, and the Films of Satyajit Ray. University of California Press, Berkeley, UNITED STATES.
   Ganti, T., 2009. The Limits of Decency and the Decency of Limits, in: Kaur, R., Mazzarella, W. (Eds.), Censorship in South Asia: Cultural Regulation from Sedition to Seduction. Indiana University Press, Bloomington, pp. 87–122.
   Gledhill, Christine (ed .) (1987) Home is where the heart is: studies in melodrama and the woman's film. London: British Film Institute.
   Gokulsing, K.M., 2004. Soft-soaping India: the world of Indian televised soap operas. Trentham Books, Stoke on Trent ; Sterling, VA.
   Gopalan, L., 2013. Bombay Noir, in: A Companion to Film Noir. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, pp. 496–511. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118523728.ch29
   Goswami, N., 2008. Autophagia and Queer Transnationality: Compulsory Heteroimperial Masculinity in Deepa Mehta’s Fire. Signs 33, 343–369. https://doi.org/10.1086/521052
   Hughes, S., 2006. House full: silent film genre, exhibition and audiences in south India. Indian Economic and Social History Review 43, 31–62.
   Hughes, S.P., 2010. When film came to Madras. BioScope: South Asian Screen Studies 1, 147–168.
   Kailasam, V., 2017. Framing the neo-noir in contemporary Tamil Cinema: Masculinity and modernity in Tamil Nadu. South Asian Popular Culture 15, 23–39. https://doi.org/10.1080/14746689.2017.1351788
   Kapur, R., 2000. Too Hot to Handle: The Cultural Politics of “Fire.” Feminist Review 53–64.
   Kaur, R., Mazzarella, W. (Eds.), 2009. Censorship in South Asia: cultural regulation from sedition to seduction. Indiana University Press, Bloomington.
   Luther, J.D., 2019. ‘Those three words:’ Karan Johar, normativity and class in Bollywood in Queering normativity: uncovering the invisible working of norms in South Asian public culture. SOAS, U. of London, London.
   Mayo, K. 1868-1940, 1998. Selections from Mother India. Kali for Women, New Delhi.
   Mishra, Vijay, Jeffery, Peter and Shoesmith, Brian, 1989. ‘The actor as parallel text in Bombay cinema.’ Quarterly Review of Film and Video, 11: 49 - 68, also in Mishra, Vijay, 2002. Bollywood cinema: temples of desire. London: Routledge, pp. 125 - 156.
   Pande, M., 2006. “Moving beyond Themselves”: Women in Hindustani Parsi Theatre and Early Hindi Films. Economic and Political Weekly 41, 1646–1653.
   Patel, G., 2002. On Fire: Sexuality and Its Incitements, in: Queering India: Same-Sex Love and Eroticism in Indian Culture and Society. Routledge, New York, London, pp. 222–233.
   Prasad, M.M., 2000. ‘The ideology of formal subsumption’, in: Ideology of the Hindi Film : A Historical Construction, Oxford India Paperbacks. Oxford University Press, Delhi, pp. 1–29.
   Schulze, B., 2002. The Cinematic “Discovery of India”: Mehboob’s Re-Invention of the Nation in Mother India. Social Scientist 30, 72–87. https://doi.org/10.2307/3517959
   Sengoopta, C., 2012. The Contours of Affinity: Satyajit Ray and the Tagorean Legacy. South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 35, 143–161.
   Sharma, Ashwani, 1993. ‘Blood sweat and tears: Amitabh Bachchan, urban demi-god.’ In P. Kirkham and J. Thumim (eds) You Tarzan: masculinity, movies and men. London: Lawrence and Wishart, pp. 167 - 180.
   Sinha, M., 2000. Refashioning Mother India: Feminism and Nationalism in Late-Colonial India. Feminist Studies 26, 623–644. https://doi.org/10.2307/3178643
   Singh, P., 2014. Queer Bollywood: The Homo-textuality of Celebrity Talk Show Gossip. Spectator: Picturing the Popular 34, 18–24.
   Tellis, A., 2012. Shame on you, Karan Johar. Daily News and Analysis.
   Thapar-Bjorkert, S., Ryan, L., 2002. Mother India/ Mother Ireland: comparative gendered dialogues of colonialis and nationalism in the early 20th century. Women’s Studies International Forum 25, 301–313.
   Thomas, R., 1989. Sanctity and scandal: The mythologization of mother India. Quarterly Review of Film and Video 11, 11–30. https://doi.org/10.1080/10509208909361312
   Thomas, R., 1995. Melodrama and the Negotiation of Morality in Mainstream Hindi Film, in: Breckenridge, C.A. (Ed.), Consuming Modernity: Public Culture in a South Asian World. University of Minnesota Press.
   Vanita, R., 2002. Homophobic Fiction/Homoerotic Advertising: The Pleasures and Perils of Twntieth-Century Indianness, in: Vanita, R. (Ed.), Queering India: Same-Sex Love and Eroticism in Indian Culture and Society. Routledge, New York, NY
   Vasudevan, R., 2011. The melodramatic public: film form and spectatorship in Indian cinema. Palgrave Macmillan, New York.
   Waugh, T., 2002. “I Sleep Behind You”: Male Homosociality and Homoeroticism in Indian Parallel Cinema, in: Vanita, R. (Ed.), Queering India: Same-Sex Love and Eroticism in Indian Culture and Society. Routledge, New York, London, p. 247.
   Yaqin, A., Luther, J.D., 2018. From the Empire’s archive: visualising the ‘Great Game’ in Pakistan’s hinterland. British Film Institute. URL https://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/features/india-film-pakistan-1920s (accessed 4.7.19).

Subject specific skills

This module develops skills of audio-visual literacy, through close textual and/or contextual analysis in relation to the moving image and sound. It may also develops understandings of historical, theoretical and conceptual frameworks relevant to screen arts and cultures.

Transferable skills

• critical and analytical thinking in relation
• independent research skills
• team work
• clarity and effectiveness of communication, oral and written
• accurate, concise and persuasive writing
• audio-visual literacy