Author: Kulkarni Damini Rajendra
Publication Year: 2023
Keywords: Indian womens,cinema,digital screens
Abstract: The idea of cinema has been typically anchored by the conceptualisation of an apparatus which includes a screen, a dark space, projector, a film reel that unspools linearly, and a spectator. For over a decade now, Indian media scholars have been alluding to digitality as heralding an imminent phase transition likely to radically reconfigure the filmic dispositif, but the lockdowns in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the subsequent closure of theatres, toppled individual elements over into a trajectory of accelerated change. Although-and indeed, because these shifts have not percolated across populations uniformly and this phase transition is not comfortably located in a past in a way that makes its impact easily discernable, these transitions have compelled discussions not only about the ontology of cinema, but also the spectator and, consequently, the shifting connections between human bodies and cinema screens. As these connections come to be rewired, the space accorded to women in discourses of spectatorship and reception also undergoes shifts. This study draws on a series of in-depth interviews with Indian women conducted during the second wave of the pandemic with the aim of examining the webs between women's bodies, and the digital screens on which they are watching cinema. In the process, this study examines how digitality is precipitating shifts in each component of the cinematic assemblage with ramifications for cinema, and the women watching films: it attempts to outline the contours of cinema and gendered subjectivities as they emerge around each other.
University: Savitribai Phule Pune University
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Category: Film Studies
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