Role Name Affiliation National Coordinator Subject Coordinator
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Role Name Affiliation National Coordinator Subject Coordinator Prof Sujata Patel Department of Sociology, University of Hyderabad Paper Coordinator Prof. Kamala Ganesh Formerly Dept. of Sociology, University of Mumbai Content Writer Prof. Nilufer E. Bharucha Adjunct Faculty, Former Senior Professor and Head, Department of English, University of Mumbai Content Reviewer Prof. Kamala Ganesh Language Editor Prof. Kamala Ganesh Technical Conversion Module Structure Description of the Module Items Description of the Module Subject Name Sociology Paper Name Sociology of the Indian Diaspora Module Name/Title Diasporic Film Making Module Id Section VI Module 3 Pre Requisites Knowledge about the Indian Diaspora. Familiarity with the construct of films. Objectives This module seeks to : Briefly sketch the history of Diasporic film making by Indians Foreground the films made by Diasporic Indians in importantdiasporic locations Discuss the films made by some of the key Diasporic film makers Discuss the relevance of diasporic films to audiences in the Old Homelandand the possible ideological conflicts between theimagings and re-imagingsof Indian society in these films Consider films set in New Homelands and enable students to understand the identitarian concerns manifested in these films especially in the second and third generation diasporic characters leading to generational conflicts Encourage students to watchdiasporicfilms and relate diasporictheories and film theories through embedded pointers Focus on the importance of Indian Diasporiccinema in a global orderand the relevance of such films to wider audiences around the world . Key words Diasporic films, film makers, imaging/re-imaging, nation, identity, conflicts, society, politics, old, new, homelands, generations, theories, criticism, global DIASPORIC FILM MAKING Section VI Module 3 QUADRANT 1 1.0 INTRODUCTION The Indian Diaspora worldwide has only in the last quarter of the twentieth Century started making films that image their lives in the diasporic locations and also re-image their old homeland India. So film making by diasporic Indians is a fairly recent activity as compared to literature written by diasporic Indians but given its wider reach, the cinematic medium has in this short time reached out to a very large audience and has achieved global visibility and garnered awards as well. What are also noteworthy are the locations from where this cinema is emanating, as well as the diasporic origins of the film makers themselves. Most of these films are from diasporic locations such as the U.K., USA and Canada. The film makers themselves also belong mainly to the first generation postcolonial professional diasporas about which you have studied in the other modules of this course. Even when one of the very well-known diasporic film makers from the U.K. is a double diasporic from Kenya, GurinderChadha, her ancestors are not from the indentured labour group taken to this erstwhile East African colony of Britain, but from the entrepreneurial Indian diaspora there which had followed in the wake of the indentured labour diaspora. What could be the reasons why the older colonial indentured diaspora has not made films though it has written acclaimed literature? My reference here is to V.S. Naipaul, the Nobel Prize winning writer from the West Indies, whose ancestors were taken to this distant British imperial outpost as indentured labour. Maybe the answers to these questions I have raised will come to you as we move further into this subject. Although a late cultural manifestation of the Indian diaspora, films made by Diasporic Indians around the globe today are studied at the cross roads of several disciplines – postcolonialism, feminism, diaspora, transnationalism and queer studies. Several academics in India and in the West have written scholarly articles and books on this cultural production (Desai, 2004; Jain 2009; Sohat and Stam, 2003; Gopinath 2005). 2.0 DIASPORIC INDIAN FILM MAKERS IN THE U.K. The earliest examples of films made by Indian diasporics come to us from the U.K. Given the long history of the Indian diaspora in Britain this is not a surprising development. The Indian Diaspora in Britain dates back to the 18th centurywhen the East India Company brought back Indian scholars, lascars and workers to Britain.Over 70,000 Indians lived in Britain by the beginning of the 20th century. After decolonization in 1947, many more Indians migrated to the U.K. to fill in the gaps left in the labour market due to the fatalities suffered by British youth in World War II. Britain in the late 1940s and early 1950s also invited professional Indians such as doctors, nurses and teachers to take up jobs in the newly envisioned welfare state. Labelled ‘Asians’ or ‘South Asians’ today, persons of Indian sub- continental origins form 4% of the British population. These include descendants of the early immigrants (the first wave), the early 20th century migrants (the second wave) and the post- war immigrants (the third wave). The third wave can be further sub-categorised into labour and professional(Visram, 1986 and 2002). By the 1960s there was resentment among white Britons, especially of the working classes against the ‘Blackening of Britain’. This gave rise toovert racism fanned by right wing extremist leaders such as Enoch Powell and his infamous ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech in Birmingham in April 1968. These developments politicised the black British youth who embraced a Black identity. Not so the Asians (i.e. Indians/Pakistanis and Bangladeshis) who remained the more passive recipients of white racism. However some Asian youth became sensitized to political and cultural resistance against racism and embraced the general ‘black’ identity (Hayward, 1997). Yet it was Black British culture, especially music, which impacted strongly upon mainstream British society and Asian culture did not develop its distinct identity until the 1980s and 1990s with Bhangra Rap and Hip Hop (Huq 2006). Given this historical and sociocultural context, it is not surprising that Asian cinema in Britain was rooted in the Black politics of the 1960s. Like the Black film makers, Asian film makers too felt the need to challenge racism and assert their distinct identity and present new images of British society. Asian film makers began to emerge in the 1970s and their films depicted identity confusion and challenged racism. The first feature film foregrounding Asians in Britain was produced by the British Film Institute and co-written by Peter Smith and DilipHiro -A Private Enterprise (1975). It was about a university graduate who wants to start a business in Birmingham and charts his travails and triumphs. It was directed by Peter Smith, so it cannot technically be counted as a diasporic Indian film though it was based on the Indian diasporaand depicted identity confusion and challenged racism. YugeshWalia and Ruhul Amin (from Bangladesh) in the 1980s produced and directed films for British Television. Another important British Asian film maker, HanifKureshi, though from Pakistan, needs to be included here not only because in Britain the diaspora from the Indian subcontinent is treated in a holistic manner and includes Pakistan and Bangladesh but because his films, especially My Beautiful Launderette (1985), also deals with an older generation of characters who lived in pre-partition India and are nostalgic not about postcolonial Pakistan but about Bombay which was their home before they had migrated to the U.K. There are also films such as Chicken Tikka Masala (2005) directed by Haramge Singh Kaliraiand Shooton Sight (2008) directed by Jag Mundhra who had also directed the acclaimed Provoked (2006), a biopic on the Asian woman who had been convicted and then freed after a heated national campaign, mainly by women’s groups, for the crime of having burnt to death her abusive and violent husband. Kalirai’s film is about closet homosexuality and coming out while Mundhra’sShoot on Sight is about a Muslim police officer Ali at Scotland Yard who has to hunt down the Muslim suspects of the 7 July 2005 London Underground bombings. In spite of himself being married to an English woman and having two children with her, Ali is disturbed by this assignment as it soon involves the shooting down of an innocent Muslim youth. This incident in the film was based on real life shoot to kill orders the London Metropolitan Police were given for this assignment of hunting down the perpetrators of the 7 July bombings and had led to the shooting down of a Brazilian on 21 July 2005 who had been mistaken for one of the terrorists. This film thus is also about ethnic profiling and its tragic consequences. You will recall that another film we have discussed in the module on Bollywood on the Diaspora, My Name is Khan (2010) also takes up the subject of ethnic profiling and its injustice, this time in USA in the wake of the 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre in New York. Some other Asian Diaspora film makers have also made films with strong anti-racist and feminist messages. One of them is PratibhaParmar’sSari Red (1988) which is a short docudrama film based on a real life incident of the attack and killing of a young British Asian woman in which the red colour of the sari, becomes a metaphor for sensuality and fertility on the one hand and violence, death and destruction on the other. GurinderChadha has provided the background narration for this film in which the futility of racist attacks on women who are victims of patriarchy inside their homes and racism outside is well highlighted. GurinderChadha is in her own right the most globally visible and commercially successful of all the British Asian film makers. 2.1 GurinderChadha: Narratives of Identity, Race and Sexuality GurinderChadha the British Asian Film maker best known for her internationally successful blockbuster film, Bend It Like Beckham (2002), is a double diasporic as her trajectory to the U.K.