CSDS invites you to a discussion on Ravi Vasudevan's new book ‘The Melodramatic Public: Film Form and Spectatorship in Indian Cinema’ published by Permanent Black and Palgrave Macmillan. The discussion will be held at CSDS, Seminar Hall, New Building, 29 Rajpur Road on Friday September 17, 2010 at 4.30 PM.

The Discussants are:

Prathama Banerjee, CSDS
Jeebesh Bagchi, Sarai and Raqs Media Collective
Christine Gledhill, Prof of Media Studies, University of Sunderland.

Refreshments will follow the discussion.

The Melodramatic Public draws on melodrama as a key conceptual apparatus to understand how entertainment cinema in India drew audiences into complex passages of historical change. As the seeming consensus of the 1950s about nation-building unravelled in the 1970s, and globalization introduced new economic and territorial compulsions, Indian cinema offered compelling testimony to debates about economic advancement, social justice, inter-community conflict, and urban lifestyles.

Melodrama provided a narrative architecture and an expressive form which connected the public and the private, as well as the personal and the political, in ways which engaged audiences emotionally. In continuous dialogue with cinematic ‘others’—within American cinema, in Indian popular cinema, and in a realist art cinema—mainstream melodrama also underwent significant mutations. This book explores the dynamics of form and narrative strategy across a wide repertoire of film practices. These include the pioneer D.G. Phalke, popular ‘auteurs’ Raj Kapoor and Guru Dutt, industry moguls Aditya and Yash Chopra, mainstream innovators Mani Rathnam, Kamalahasan, and Ram Gopal Verma, and art and documentary cinema icons Satyajit Ray and Anand Patwardhan.

The book concludes with the contemporary global moment associated with ‘Bollywood’. It considers changes in state policy and industrial organization, and the impact of digital technologies, new economies of consumption, and wider export markets on Indian film culture.