FINDAS Workshop "Rethinking Indian Cinema"

Speaker 1 Anil ZANKAR (Freelance Filmmaker, Vividha Communications)
The Innovative Parallel”
The term ‘Bollywood’ has become fashionable in India and outside of India while discussing Indian films. It is a problematic label tied to the bulk of Hindi films making them as if the flagship of popular Indian culture over the years. Hindi cinema does have the advantage of being a pan-Indian audience and rides on the back of Hindi being the national language. However, it should be pointed out that Hindi has been a language of a large area essentially states like UP, Bihar, Rajasthan, Chattisgarh, Jharkhand and MP mainly and many large language groups exist in India outside this area. The other regional film industries have been strong and have their own histories. While the mainstream Hindi films by and large deal in stereotypes; changing only superficially, the innovation is present in greater measure in the regional films. This innovation has a history of a few decades in the post-Independent India. It has occurred over this period in the form of various movements having different impulses.

Speaker 2 Fumiko OSHIKAWA (Kyoto University)
"Hindi Films in Multiplex Age: Citizenship and ‘Others’"

Commentator Hiroshi YAMASHITA (Tohoku University)

URL: http://www.tufs.ac.jp/ts/society/findas/archives/1510