Output details
34 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
University of Westminster
Cinema in the Colonial City: Early film audiences in Calcutta
The essay maps for the first time the early 20th century emergence of film exhibition in Calcutta, across the European and Indian towns, underlining the presence of multi-ethnic and multi-lingual audiences in the cinemas and revealing complex cultural practices. It engages with the social and urban history of this key colonial city to locate cinema-going cultures and practices within its specific local context. Thereby the study implodes the myth of a homogeneous audience for silent cinema in India. Simultaneously, by discussing the circulation of American and European film in multiple sites of film exhibition in Calcutta, it connects local and global film cultures in the early 20th century. The research involved rigorous archival study of rare primary sources in English and Indian languages, housed in British and Indian archives, over a nine-month period. These included collections in the British Library, the National Library of India, Bangiya Sahitya Parishad (Calcutta), National Film Archives of India (Pune) and personal collections in Calcutta. By discussing a rich range of rare primary materials, this original study shifts focus from the film text to extra-filmic materials, contexts, audiences and archives. In so doing, the work highlights the importance of adopting new methodological approaches to move the debate beyond national cinema by additionally underscoring the significance of engaging with local archives alongside the larger global context of inter-war film circulation. The essay’s particular importance lies in extending research into cinema-going and exhibition beyond the Euro-American city sites familiar to film studies and also beyond Bombay cinema. The author has been an active member of Domitor, the world-leading network of early cinema scholars, for over five years, and was invited to contribute to this edited volume alongside other leading film scholars. The book was long-listed for the Kraszna Krausz Book Awards, 2013.
