Screening the Urban: An Analysis of the Urban Life and Subjectivities in the Assamese Films of Bhabendra Nath Saikia and Jahnu Barua
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5195/cinej.2016.140Keywords:
Keywords, Assamese cinema, Bhabendra Nath Saikia, Jahnu Barua, Urban Subjectivity, Post-independence development.Abstract
Amidst the clichéd representations of the urban world in Indian cinema in post-independence times, where ‘the urban’ is often perceived as the inevitable vice, there are few directors in both mainstream and regional cinema of India who attempted to dwell on a more engaged and critical reading of the newly emerging urban world and subject in Indian contexts. Within the domain of the Assamese cinema, Bhabendra Nath Saikia and Jahnu Barua have been the two prolific serious film makers who are noted for such engagement of their films with urbanity. This paper aims to describe, analyze and compare the characteristics of the cinematic projections of the urban life and urban subjectivities in the films of Saikia and Barua.
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