a workshop being organised by the Department of English,
Bharati College, University of Delhi, Delhi
on
Monday, 16th February 2015
in Bharati College,
C – 4, Janakpuri, Delhi – 58.
***
Even though cinema originated independently of literature and shares with it little in terms of modes of production and manners of reception, it has always relied vitally on the latter for growth and sustenance as an art form in itself. From cinema’s inception, film makers have transformed a range of literary texts and genres into the visual and the audio-visual form. This transference, of course, has been as varied and vivid as the texts which have been so adapted, and hence adaptations of literary texts may be considered more or less central to the consolidation of cinema as a popular, and populist, art form. Therefore, while the mores, tenor and politics of adaptation have, of course, varied – as has the debate over fidelity and (copy)right – the cinematic may be considered as being embryonically connected to the literary.
These connections, from the very obvious though often ignored literariness of the cinematic script to the much discussed transformative absorption of a multitude of literary genres into the cinematic form, have been the subject of much comment and celebration, academic as well as artistic. In recent times, this closeness has become much more symbiotic as literary genres break through the tyranny of the written – the typed – word and play with speech as sound and with image as visuality. The emergence of these new literary prototypes along with the continued metamorphosis of the literary into the cinematic is what makes it interesting and useful to revisit the question of not just adaptation but of the cinematic and the literary as well.
It is this question – in the Indian context – which this workshop is interested in. Cinema’s connections with and debts to literature in our context have been acknowledged and documented well by artists and critics alike, but we wish to revisit this connection in all its multifariousness so as to examine better the aesthetics, politics and semiotics of adaptations of literary texts with regard to Indian cinemas. Hence, along with engaging with the eternally pertinent questions of populism, semiotic politics, artistic fidelity, historicity, and commercialism, this workshop also seeks to engage with the literary as oral and as visual and, thus, with the uncertain, unfolding consequences of the dissolution of the literary and the cinematic as distinct art forms.
Accordingly, proposals are invited for papers of fifteen to twenty minutes’ duration for an intensive workshop to be held at Bharati College on Monday, 15th February 2015. Along with academic papers, the workshop will also involve visits to some of the iconic cinema halls of Delhi and a discussion on the multifaceted literariness which they birthed and which has been thrust upon them. We encourage not just academicians, professional as well as amateurs, but also film makers and other artists to apply. We will be happy to assist outstation participants in finding suitable accommodation, but, unfortunately, will not be able to provide for the same. Participants may focus on any of the above or the following pointers, though we encourage them to bring different ideas to the forum as well:
- Colonial cinema and commercial literature.
- Tarakki aur flim.
- Scripting literature, writing cinema.
- Popularity and populism: cinema and literature.
- Orality and(/at(?)) the frontiers of cinema.
- Vlogging: literature as cinema?
- Re-forming the past: historicist adaptation.
Proposals must be mailed as MS Word documents to the Department’s email address, conf.eng.bc@gmail.com, by Saturday, 24th January 2015; acceptances/rejections shall be conveyed by Wednesday, 28th January 2015. The proceedings will be recorded and presented as vlogumentaries on our blog and on the college’s YouTube channel; they might also be published. This will be the first in a series of quarterly workshops to be organised annually by the Department of English, Bharati College.