ART 314 - Indian Cinema Between Media

Since its inception in the early twentieth century, Indian cinema has reflected a unique aesthetic syncretism, shaped by the transfer and translation of visual forms and ideas across various media. This course explores the intermedial connections between Indian films and other visual traditions, such as painting, print, and photography to unpack the entangled technological and conceptual nexus between still, printed, and moving images. We will analyze how an array of art forms such as premodern painted manuscripts, colonial photography, 20^th-century mass-produced prints, and modernist architecture have shaped the visual economies of Indian films. In attending to the significance of formal choices and innovations evident within a particular film, genre, or directorial oeuvre, we will critically analyze the relationship between form and content. Through this study, we will not only consider a reading of the visual image through its cultural and symbolic meanings but also explore a phenomenologically inflected understanding of images as constituting the experience of everyday life, and indeed, modernity, in India.

Unit(s): 1
Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group I
Prerequisite(s): ART 201
Instructional Method: Conference
Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):

Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).