The Territorial Fragments of Globalization in Contemporary Bombay Cinema

ConTrust Research seminar “India as Method: Challenges and Perspectives in the Study of Media and Politics in Contemporary South Asia”

This presentation will examine the use of locations in Bombay cinema since the turn of the 21st century. The complicated workings of various kinds of production infrastructures typically shape cinema’s topographical motivations and sense of scale. Through a comparative analysis of a set of films shot in and around Bombay with films shot in iconic locations outside India, I will establish how the aesthetic drives of vertical, horizontal, and transnational urbanism have generated a cartographic diversity in the cinematic imagination of globalized India.

Ranjani Mazumdar teaches cinema studies at the School of Arts and Aesthetics at Jawaharlal Nehru University. She is the author of Bombay Cinema: An Archive of the City, and her current research focuses on globalization and film culture, intermedial encounters, and the intersection of technology, travel, design, and colour in 1960s Bombay Cinema.

Presented by:
Graduate Research Training Group “Configurations of Film”, Institute for Theatre, Film and Media Studies (TFM) at Goethe University and Research Initiative “ConTrust: Trust in Conflict – Political Life under Conditions of Uncertainty” at the Research Centre Normative Orders