International Conference How does publicity shape and transform politics, cultural experience and governance in the Long 20th Century? How have the institutions and practices of publicity evolved through changing media environments, governmental forms and commodity worlds to configure the political in a broad and multi-sited way? This international conference has a twin focus on India, […]
Made three years apart, Ray's Mahanagar (The Big City, 1963) and Ritwik Ghatak's Meghe Dhaka Tara (The Cloud-Covered Star, 1960) both tell stories of women in professional life. The two films show intersecting but radically different views of Calcutta after independence and the division into India and Pakistan. Ghatak's approach to cinema and Bengal sheds […]
ConTrust Research seminar "India as Method: Challenges and Perspectives in the Study of Media and Politics in Contemporary South Asia" With Ruchir Joshi Ruchir Joshi joined the film world in India in the early 1980s, when he was in his early twenties, first as an assistant director and then as an independent documentary and essay […]
Satyajit Ray's Charulata (1964) is about the loneliness of a young woman whose wealthy husband is absorbed in his political and publishing projects. Charu (Madhabi Mukherjee) becomes a figure of modernity itself, insofar as her curious outward gaze becomes an inward gaze that exposes her loneliness, her self-perception and her emotional world. Priyadarshini Shanker is […]
Priyadarshini Shanker (University of North Carolina, Wilmington) This talk intervenes in three prevailing frameworks of Indian film and media studies - auteurist approaches, history of film movements, and digital media studies - through three case studies that centralize the optics of feminist performances. Shanker proposes corporeal intervention that potentially recasts the historiography of Indian cinema […]
Lecture by: Gil Eyal (Colombia University) "Trust" has become one of the keywords of our time. Politicians and the media bemoan the decline of trust in science and experts, as well as in public institutions more generally. Global consultancies like McKinsey and Deloitte sell trust measurement and trust building as part of their portfolio. The […]
Lecture and discussion With Mohammed Ali Chahrour (co-editor of the book "Generalverdacht") and Dr. Robert Pelzer (TU Berlin) In recent years, the social discourse surrounding so-called clan crime has intensified, particularly in major German cities. While police situation reports and high-profile cases in the media give the impression that there is a considerable threat, civil […]
Conference of the Research Project "Police Accountability: Towards International Standards" / ConTrust Praxisforum In times of expanding police powers as well as increasing discussions about legitimacy and problems within the police, the question of police accountability and control becomes vital. How is police accountability organized? How are police complaints bodies dealing with complaints? What are […]
Ruchir Joshi (film-maker, columnist and writer based in Calcutta) This program includes two essay films Memories of a Milk City (1991) and Tales of Planet Kolkata (1993) by Ruchir Joshi, an Indian film-maker, cultural writer, and novelist based in Kolkata. Shot on 16 mm, both films reimagine the form of the essay film to propose […]