Wits Theatre celebrates 100 years of Bollywood

La University of the Witwatersrand di Johannesburg ha organizzato la rassegna Wits Theatre celebrates 100 years of Bollywood svoltasi dal 13 al 17 maggio 2013. Fra i titoli in cartellone anche Chalte Chalte. Nella presentazione si legge: 'Whether it’s the 1.2 billion people in India whose appetite for Indian films makes Bollywood the world’s most prolific film industry, or the far flung Indian diaspora whose obsession with Bollywood serves to affirm their culture and even identity in foreign lands, or the adoring fans of Asia Minor, no one can deny the power of Indian Cinema'. Inoltre il docente Dilip Menon ha tenuto la conferenza Making a song and dance of it: taking Bollywood seriously. Menon ha dichiarato: 'As has generally been argued, the Hindi film is not about a plotline and inexorable movement towards a climax alone. The Hindi film is like the "undivided Hindu family": dialogues, lyrics, plot, music, acting, all living together separately, as it were'.

Centenary of Indian Cinema: Aesthetics, Economics, and Politics

Il 3 e il 4 ottobre 2013 presso l'università di Otago (Nuova Zelanda) si terrà il seminario Centenary of Indian Cinema: Aesthetics, Economics, and Politics, col patrocinio del New Zealand India Research Institute. Nell'annuncio ufficiale si legge: 'Today, Indian cinema is, undoubtedly, a global transnational cultural industry in terms of output and reach, and in terms of the multifaceted relationships to social, economic, cultural, political, ideological, aesthetic, and institutional discourses. It is a significant cultural industry that plays a central role in articulating fundamental modalities of inscribing subjectivities gender, sexuality, nationalism, caste, class, religion, ethnicity played out within specific historical moments and fields of power. Further, it should be noted that Indian cinema is a heterogeneous assemblage that includes, in addition to mainstream regional Indian cinemas, documentary films, parallel cinema, short films, digital films, amateur films and those made for the festival circuit. It has, in that regard, numerous countenances. (...) The Indian film industry is now a multi-billion dollar business and employs thousands of actors and technicians. Hence its commercial and human resource aspects cannot be neglected either. (...) What is the future of this cinema? (...) How do we evaluate the economic impact of this film industry, both inside India and outside, as increasingly Indian films are shot in foreign countries, including New Zealand? (...) At this critical juncture of Indian cinemas history and a rapidly changing mediascape, it is time, we believe to reflect on and debate Indian cinema: its pasts, present and future; and its possibilities, potentialities, and limits'.

Programma