Funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council. Project no. AH/W006464/1. Implementation period: 2022-2024.
Principal Investigator Professor Valentina Vitali (University of East London),
co-investigator Dr. Deimantas Valančiūnas (Vilnius University).
Sharing a colonial past under British rule and separated by regional tensions since 1948, South Asian nations have all been equally exposed to Hindi cinema for decades. Within the region, Hindi cinema made in India has been simultaneously a shared medium and a modern form of cultural colonisation. Video online distribution (VOD) is now beginning to destabilise this film industrial configuration, enabling the global circulation of films from South Asian countries that, until recently, were confined to the domestic market.
By bringing together filmmakers from different South Asian countries and scholars, and combining theoretical approaches with the experience of creative industry professionals, this network enables research that explores how VODs' operation (distribution, commissioning and production) is shaping ideas of South Asian identity and regional relations. It will be the first network to research VODs' operation from this methodological and geographic perspective. Networking also stimulates transnational dialogue among nationals who share common historical and cultural influences but have entertained conflictual political relations. Third, networking enables us to address questions of content, aesthetics and representation from different professional windows, implementing an interdisciplinary, comparative methodology that, based on localised angles, will be of relevance to the study of VOD's impact on independent cinema also in other regions.