CONFERENCE STATEMENT
In the 1960s and the early 70s, the Indian New Wave emerged as a definitive film movement that broke away from the commercial melodramatic films that held a deep clutch over the nation’s cinematic imagination. It was envisaged as a cultural-political project of the postcolonial nation state to produce national cinema that would captivate the local and international audience. This state sponsored movement gave birth to a new generation of radical avant-garde and political cinema that at once celebrated, subverted, and re-imagined the notion of Indian cinema. Also called the parallel cinema, this form of filmmaking challenged the hegemony of the melodramatic cinema that the masses consumed. However, this form suffered a premature end due to its inability to sustain a commercially viable distribution channel. By the mid-eighties, the state re-conceptualized its relationship to the making of national cinema and ceased funding. Similar to the French New Wave, the New German Cinema and the American Independent Film movement, the Indian New Wave was a heterogenous mixture of diverse cinematic idioms ranging from politically inflected neo-realism to narrative experimentations. This conference is an attempt to historicize, re-frame and re-configure the Indian New Wave by focusing on its most radical figures, Mani Kaul and Kumar Shahani. It aims to explore, interrogate and contextualize the relationship of this avant-garde cinema to the neo-realist cinema of Satyajit Ray and Ritwik Ghatak, its genealogical predecessors, as well as to the contemporary political cinema of Indian New Wave filmmakers Shyam Benegal, Adoor Gopalkirshnan and Mrinal Sen.
FILMS
Aranyer
Din Ratri (Days and Nights in the Forest)
Dir: Satyajit Ray (1970, 115 minutes, 35mm)
Print source: Contemporary Films, UK
Jukti,
Takko Aar Gappo (Reason, Debate and a Story)
Dir: Ritwik Ghatak (1974, 120 minutes, 35mm)
Print source: Contemporary Films, UK
Khayal
Gatha
Dir: Kumar Shahani (1989, 103 minutes, 35mm)
Print courtesy: Queensland Art Gallery,
Austarlia & Kumar Shahani
Siddeshwari
Dir: Mani Kaul (1989, 92minutes, 35mm)
Print courtesy: Films Division, India
& Mani Kaul
Kathapurushan
(Man of the Story)
Dir: Adoor Gopalakrishnan (1996, 105 minutes, 35mm)
Print courtesy James Mukalel & Adoor Gopalakrishnan
Oka
Oori Katha (The Outsiders)
Dir: Mrinal Sen (1977, 110 minutes, 35mm)
Print source: Contemporary Films, UK
PARTICIPANTS
Richard Allen,
New York University
The Articulacy of Form: Mani Kaul's Duvidha
Parag
Amladi, New York University
Mani Kaul: Considerations on Practice
Dudley
Andrew, Yale University
Discussant
Moinak
Biswas, Jadavpur University, Calcutta
Inscribing Messages: The Political Wave
Ashish
Chadha, Yale University
In Search of a Genealogy: Experimental, Avant-garde or Prayoga?
Manishita
Dass, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Look Back in Angst: A Retrospective View of Mrinal Sen's Akaler Sandhane
(In Search of Famine) and the Indian New Wave's Politics of Authenticity.
Aparna
Frank, New York University
Illusions of Narrative: Color and Camera Movement in Kumar Shahani's 'Maya
Darpan'
Amrit
Gangar, Independent film critic and scholar from Bombay
Svabhava Flowing into Streams: In Continuum. Interrogating the Avant-garde
and the Wave
Suranjan
Ganguly, University of Colorado, Boulder
Vestiges of Power: Adoor Gopalakrishnan's Rat Trap and The Servile
Ashish
Rajadhyaksha, Centre for the Study of Culture & Society, Bangalore
The Kumar Shahani Papers: The New Indian Cinema and the Birth of Film
Theory in India
Richard
Suchenski, Yale University
Kumar Shahani, Mani Kaul, and the Indian Avant-Garde
INFORMATION
All
screenings and panels will be held in Whitney Humanities Center, 53 Wall Street,
Yale University, CT 06511
All screenings and panel are free and open to public.
All films are subtitled in Englsh.
Email queries to ashish.chadha@yale.edu or dudley.andrew@yale.edu