Where Histories Reside: India as Filmed Space

Description

In Where Histories Reside Priya Jaikumar examines eight decades of films shot on location in India to show how attending to filmed space reveals alternative timelines and histories of cinema. In this bold “spatial” film historiography, Jaikumar outlines factors ranging from state bureaucracies and commercial infrastructures to aesthetic styles and neoliberal policies that shape India’s filmed space. Whether discussing how educational shorts from Britain and India transform natural landscapes into instructional lessons or how Jean Renoir’s The River (1951) presents a universal human condition through the particularities of place, Jaikumar demonstrates that the history of filming a location has always been a history of competing assumptions, experiences, practices, and representational regimes. In so doing, she reveals that addressing the persistent question of “what is cinema?” must account for an aesthetics and politics of space. Title Page Copyright Dedication Epigraphs Contents Acknowledgments Introduction: Filmed Space Part I: Rationalized Spaces 1. Disciplinary: Indian Towns in British Geography Classrooms 2. Regulatory: The State in Films Division’s Himalayan Documentaries Part II: Affective Spaces 3. Sublime: Immanence and Transcendence in Jean Renoir’s India 4. Residual: Lucknow and the Haveli as Cinematic Topoi Part III: Commodified Spaces 5. Global: From Bollywood Locations to Film Stock Rations Conclusion: Cinema and Historiographies of Space Appendix Notes Bibliography Index