Kolkota “Rising”: The Politics of Place in Recent Bengali Cinema

Recent scholarship on location shooting in film studies, specifically in terms of how footage shot on location contributes to our experience of place, privileges its ability to archive or document the past lives of place through audio-visual means. 

The central question “Kolkata ‘Rising’: The Politics of Place in Recent Bengali Cinema” explores is whether or not location shooting can also function as the basis for a depiction of place that moves beyond documentation or testimony towards representations that convey the aspirations, desires and anxieties shaping discourses regarding the future of cities? 

Guha’s primary case study concerns the revival of the city of Kolkata as a shooting location for a series of contemporary Bengali films since 2009. As Guha demonstrates, a number of these films engage both directly and indirectly with a series of debates concerning Kolkata’s future as a global city.

The 2019 Sydney Asian Art Series was convened by Olivier Krischer, and co-presented by the Power Institute, the China Studies Centre and VisAsia at the Art Gallery of NSW.