FACULTY OF ARTS----Film Studies

Attainments at national and international level

The members of the Faculty attend seminars and conferences on cinema, television and other media in India and abroad and regularly contribute to prestigious publications. Since this Department is the pioneer in formal teaching of Film Studies at the University level in India, the members of the Faculty have to teach at and develop curricula for various institutions in India. The Department also provides expertise and consultation for the establishment and functioning of various government and non-government bodies engaged in activities related to film and media.

One of the major contributions of the Department has been through its students who have passed out. While a part of the alumni pursue higher studies in film and media in Universities in the USA, UK and Australia and also in various research institutions in India, another part goes on to take up film-and-media journalism. Many of our students are teaching Film Studies and Media Studies in several institutions in West Bengal. They have started making impact in various fields, from NGOs, Civil Services and Film Societies to advertising agencies and PR firms.There is also a steady flow of the Departmental students into the thriving media and film industry. This is perhaps the first time in India that experts with postgraduate degrees in film are operating in such large numbers in teaching, research, media and service industries. In the process, the Department is proving to be a crucial site for specialized human-resource generation.

The students of the Department make 2 short films every year as part of the postgraduate curriculum. Some of these films have featured in film festivals in India. In 2002, the Department showcased its student-films through a film festival inaugurated by the Chief Minister of West Bengal. 

The annual conferences organized by the Department have become a major meeting point for scholars in the field from all over the world. The papers presented at these conferences are collected every year in the Departmental Journal, Journal of the Moving Image which comes out once in a year. The journal’ has earned recognition worldwide as a major publication in the field of Film and Media Studies. This is the only scholarly journal on Indian Film and Media published from India. The volumes published so far are as follows:

Journal of the Moving Image, Number 1, Autumn 1999. The volume features writings on contemporary popular cinema in India.

Journal of the Moving Image, Number 2, December 2001. The volume features papers presented at the national Seminar on Satyajit Ray and the Legacy of Realism, organized by the Department in March, 2000 and other articles.

Journal of the Moving Image, Number 3, June 2004. The volume features papers presented at the International Symposium titled Encountering Theory: Three Decades of the Humanities Experiment organized by the Department in September, 2003.

Journal of the Moving Image, Number 4, November 2005. The volume features papers presented at the international conference titled Television in India: Issues in History, Theory and Culture organized by the Department in December, 2004.

Journal of the Moving Image, Number 5, November 2005. The volume features papers presented at the international conference titled Currents in popular Cinema: Liberalization and after organized by the Department in November, 2005.

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Schools and Centres to which members of the faculty are attached

• School of Media, Communication and Culture 

• School of Women’s Studies

• School of Cultural Text and Records

• School of Education Technology

• Centre for European Studies

•Centre for Marxian Studies

• Centre for Refugee Studies

• Centre for Counselling and Self-development

• Editing as Skill (UPE Programme)

• Study of Cultural Processes (UPE Programme)

The Media Lab

www.medialabju.org 

The Department's major new initiative is the Media Lab, a center for experiments with forms of knowledge that contemporary media have made possible. It will extend the work of Film Studies into the emerging digital world of arts and ideas.

 Image and sound can no longer be studied only in the forms they have on the film screen, or on TV. Increasingly, viewers are turning into users of the moving image. The audio-visual entity now forms a sphere of communication as well as an open archive. It takes on the form of notes and scribbles, diary and letter, private reflection and public protest. Proliferating informal practices of film, word and music have created a language in which we have begun to make ordinary conversation.

 The university will be now incomplete without a space where such activities are allowed into the domain of knowledge production.

 The Media Lab will extend the work of the Department of Film Studies into the new media reality. It will host archiving, research and training, but in forms that are not normally explored in our academia. It hopes to bring together the skills of the scholar and the artist, the critic and the activist, into one process of creative learning.

 The regular activity of the Department is concerned with film - and to some extent television - in its historical, aesthetic and cultural dimensions. Film theory and film history occupy a major place in the curriculum. As a product of inter-disciplinary adventures in the arts and social sciences, Film Studies however demands continuous innovation in the material and methods. The Lab is envisioned as a place where we shall be able to grapple with new objects and rules of learning at a time when cinema itself is undergoing radical transformation.

 This will also be our partnership in the globally emerging initiative of Digital Humanities.

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