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Video Culture in India
The Analog Era
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Book Presentation:
• One of the first books to explore the diverse media history of the analog video era in India
• Reconstructs the evolution of analog video culture through interdisciplinary approaches, including oral histories, archival resources, and discarded tapes
• Provides key information on the socio-political context of video culture, which existing digital media studies lack
Media plays a significant role in reshaping, restructuring, and recalibrating the existing understandings of society and politics, giving birth to new cultural forms. Video, as a medium, captures not only real-time events but also the ethos of a milieu. Video Culture in India: The Analog Era narrates the history of video technology in India since its introduction in the 1980s, locating the moment within the country's socio-political context. It aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of video technology in post-1980s India: one that speaks to its global history and context and fills the lacunae in the existing literature of the field. The monograph draws on diverse oral histories, discarded tapes, and forgotten archives to unravel the history of analog video in India. Specifically, it looks at the widespread popularity of the marriage video, the little-known history of the video-film, the intensity associated with the video-news magazine, and the explosive imagination attached to the religious video. Analysing the multi-dimensionality of video provides the context for a better understanding of the proliferation of video culture in contemporary sites such as television news channels, digital photography, WhatsApp videos, and streaming. As the first full-length study of analog video production and circulation in India, this book invokes the forgotten video era in India.
About the Author:
Ishita Tiwary, Assistant Professor and Canada Research Chair, Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema, Concordia University, Montreal Ishita Tiwary is Assistant Professor and Canada Research Chair at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema, Concordia University, Montreal. Her research interests include video cultures, media infrastructures, migration, contraband media practices, and media aesthetics. She has published essays in the International Journal of Cultural Studies, JumpCut, Bioscope: South Asian Screen Studies, Post Script: Essays in Film and Humanities, Culture Machine, and MARG: Journal of Indian Art, and in edited collections on the topics of media piracy, video histories, and streaming platforms.
Press Reviews:
"In a highly enjoyable, innovative, and insightful book, Video Culture in India, Ishita Tiwary examines the video revolution in India and the radical new possibilities it opened up. Locating the arrival of video technology within India's socio-political context, the book illustrates how video recorders innovated new distribution infrastructures, new spaces of exhibition, and new media genres for Indian audiences. Blending entertaining detail with scholarly precision, Tiwary decisively shows how video was a revolution in aesthetics and grassroots media and, ultimately, a cultural force that reshaped the media landscape in India." - Brian Larkin, Professor of Anthropology and Co-Director, Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities, Columbia University
"In an era defined by digital screens and streaming video, it is easy to forget the transformative impact of analog video in postcolonial media cultures. Drawing on an impressive range of archival sources, trade materials, and interviews, Ishita Tiwary offers a compelling analysis of the cultural life of an influential but largely neglected media form in 1980s India. Imaginative and accessible, this book makes vital contributions to film and media studies. " - Aswin Punathambekar, Professor of Communication, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, and Director, Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication (CARGC)
See the publisher website: Oxford University Press
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