South Asian Film Fiction

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

The course will examine a selection of mostly Indian cinema, but with some examples also taken from Bhutan, Pakistan and Bangladesh. A prominent director in the course will be Satiyajit Ray – who deals extensively with adaptation and the majority of whose films are taken directly from famous works. However, the course will also focus on the idea of adaptation – what does it mean to translate a work of fiction into a work of cinema or tv? What takes place in the transition from the textual to the visual? Do certain problems and decisions repeat themselves? How do we view adaptations if we know the original – and how does this knowledge change our idea of the film? Are there two audiences for a film – one that knows the source, and one that doesn’t? Three central scholarly texts (Naremore, Hutcheon, Stam and perhaps also Andrew Dudley’s earlier 1984 book) will also be considered by us as we move through these questions.