Indian Cinema in the United States, 1928-Present

FAIN: FT-60608-13

Tejaswini Ganti
New York University (New York, NY 10012-1019)

This project examines the history of Indo-U.S. relations through the lens of filmmaking. Since the early 20th century, cinema has been an important arena of cultural exchange, economic collaboration, diplomatic policy, and social interaction between India and the United States. I examine the history of such exchanges by focusing an anthropological lens on the social life of cinema and how it became implicated in the political, economic, and cultural relations between India and the U.S. Examining the interactions between American and Indian filmmakers from the late 1920s-1960s, provides a more nuanced and complex portrait of cultural industries like Hollywood and the Bombay film industry, while analyzing the historical and material conditions that enabled the circulation of Indian films and filmmakers in the U.S. during that same period, reveals dimensions of the cultural life of the South Asian diaspora in the U.S. that have escaped scholarly attention.