Research "stuff"

PhD Working Title:
"Mehta’s Film Trilogy: Theorising Transnational Production and Reception; Practising Diasporic Creativity"

Project Summary:
Coming to a reading of Deepa Mehta’s film trilogy comprising Fire, Earth and Water from the situated perspective of a young Indian woman living in the West, I aim to not only analyse these films from a hybrid feminist-postcolonial-poststructural theoretical position, but also utilise them as a springboard for my own diasporic filmmaking practice. Through planned filmed interviews with the director, and with randomly selected audience members from the Indian diaspora and the ‘liberal’ west, the creative work will raise questions about the politics of meaning-making as observed in the production and reception studies. While the exegesis may arrive at a re-mediated reading of these complex, transnationally produced and consumed texts, it is also likely to highlight the need for wider awareness and acceptance of homeland-critiquing diasporic films beyond the exclusive international film festival circuit.