India Habitat Centre, Casuarina Hall. Times are IST (India Standard Time)
Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes (CHCI)
ICLS; Centre for Humanities Research at the University of the Western Cape (South Africa); Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (Delhi); Tsinghua Institute of Advanced Study, Tsinghua University (Beijing)
Please note that the Global Institute “Global Racisms” events are closed to the public.
This presentation will look at the relationship between caste and cinema through a focus on three films located in the everyday textures of urban life. Neeraj Ghaywan’s Masaan is based in Banaras, while Chaitanya Tamhane’s Court and Pa. Ranjith’s Kaala are set in Bombay. Court is a judicial drama that reflects on the suicide of a sewage worker. Kaala is a film about a Dharavi resident who decides to take on a major real estate tycoon. Masaan explores the lives of a Dalit man from the Dom community and an educated Brahmin girl, both of whom strive for a better life. The narrative accounts of lived experiences are analysed through the prism of cinematic cartography, production design, and architectural visions. I will show how cinema’s inherent approach to ‘mapping’ is creatively negotiated to build a new spatial language for the articulation of caste concerns.
Ranjani Mazumdar is Professor of Cinema Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi. Her publications focus on urban cultures, popular cinema, gender, and the cinematic city. She is the author of Bombay Cinema: An Archive of the City (2007) and co-editor with Neepa Majumdar of A Companion to Indian Cinema (2022). Her current research focuses on India Habitat Centre globalisation and film culture, intermedial encounters, and the intersection of technology, Casuarina Hall travel, design, and colour in 1960s Bombay Cinema.
