Documentary films in India

About this book

"This book introduces the diverse practices of documentary films in India. It examines the oeuvres of three non-canonical practitioners: ethnographic filmmaker, David MacDougall; northeast India-based moving-image artists group, Desire Machine Collective; and avant-garde filmmaker and cinema philosopher, Kumar Shahani. Sharma offers in-depth analysis of these practitioners' distinct documentary methods and aesthetics, exploring how their oeuvres constitute a critical and self-reflexive approach to documentary-making in India. The book commences with an overview of the factors that have shaped the political contours of documentary-making in India, before introducing the select practitioners as a counter-point to the dominant and canonical tendencies of documentary films in India. Three sections of the book take up one filmmaker each, whose oeuvre is studied in-depth with a view to explore and articulate how the critical discourse and aesthetic strategies of their films evolve"--