Coming into cinema: Critical cosmopolitanisms of Malayalam cinema (1930–1955)

Menon, Bindu (2022) Coming into cinema: Critical cosmopolitanisms of Malayalam cinema (1930–1955). In: A Companion to Indian Cinema. Wiley, pp. 412-432. ISBN 9781119048206

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Abstract

The chapter studies the discursive contours of Malayalam cinema in the context of regional Indian film cultures emerging in the 1940s. The rigid correlations of geolinguistic referents of linguistic nationalisms with language cinemas limit film historiography to binary frameworks of nation and region. This assumption stymies a fuller examination of practices, epistemologies, disembeddings, contestations, translations, and vocabularies that enabled regional cinema industries and publics. By reading print material on cinema in the Malayalam language and the cultural work of film critics in the formative years of the 1940s, this essay argues that partisan category formations and comparative methods enabled a reading of cultural knowledge through new terms and vocabularies. It emphasizes the significance of trans-local connections, frameworks drawn from comparative experiences of modernities, and cosmopolitan imaginaries in shaping regional cinema.

Item Type: Book Section
Authors: Menon, Bindu
Editors:
Editors
Email
ORCID
Majumdar, Neepa
UNSPECIFIED
UNSPECIFIED
Majumdar, Ranjani
UNSPECIFIED
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Document Language:
Language
English
Subjects: Social sciences > Sociology & anthropology > Culture & institutions
Social sciences > Sociology & anthropology > Culture & institutions > Specific aspects of culture > Recreation and performing arts
Language
Divisions: Azim Premji University - Bengaluru > School of Arts and Sciences
Full Text Status: None
URI: http://publications.azimpremjiuniversity.edu.in/id/eprint/7398
Publisher URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119048206.ch18

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