Resistance in Indian Documentary Film: Aesthetics, Culture and Practice

While sizable literature exists on the themes, issues and voices that constitute resistance in historical Indian documentary cinema, less is known about contemporary modes of resistance in Indian documentary. This volume identifies languages and practices of resistance constructed by Indian documentary practitioners located in contemporary global and national contexts organised by majoritarian political discourse, rising social inequalities, tightening media regulatory mechanisms and variable access to digital technologies. Extending its analytical lens beyond textual politics, the volume offers an original conceptualisation of how we identify, mobilise, and recuperate acts of resistance as both represented in documentary and those represented by the organisation of documentary practice e.g., documentary exhibition, curation, education, and criticism. Combining scholarly essays and practitioner writing, the volume offers a timely reconsideration of how central debates and issues of power and representation in documentary may be studied as objects of analysis and as subjective accounts of individual experience, decisions, and actions relating to documentary aesthetics and practice.

Shweta Kishore lectures in Screen and Media at RMIT University, Australia. She is the author of Indian Documentary Film and Filmmakers: Independence in Practice and has published widely on Indian documentary, documentary ethics, feminist film, and activist film festivals. Shweta is a documentary practitioner and has curated documentary and artist cinema programmes for the Kochi Muziris Biennale (India), The Factory Contemporary Arts Centre (Vietnam), and the Melbourne International Film Festival (Australia).

Kunal Ray teaches literary and cultural studies at FLAME University, Pune, India. His writings on art and culture regularly appear in The Hindu, The Indian Express, Hindustan Times amongst other publications. He co-edited Shabd aur Sangeet- Unraveling Song-Texts in India. He is also the co-founder and co-editor of On Eating - A Multilingual Journal of Food & Eating.