<nettime> Cinema and Censorship: The Politcs of Control in India

[Frederick Noronha [ààààààà ààààààà] <fred@bytesforall.org>]

Cinema and Censorship: The Politcs of Control in India
Someswar Bhowmik Pp 381
Orient BlackSwan 2009
Rs 495
ISBN 978-81-250-3665-4

The author heads EMRC at Kolkata (and was a research scientist at the
Educational Multimedia Research Centre at St Xavier's there, when the
book was written).

In nine chapters (plus preface, references, index) this book looks at
mapping the field, the politics of film censorship, a medium under
siege and how the 'past' delivers the 'present'.

It also looks more closely at the issue by focussing on four
movements: 1950-1964, 1964-1976, 1977-1991 and 1991-2006. The final
chapter is titled 'A Medium In Chains?'

Writes the author in his preface:
The present treatise is the result of my enquiry,
between March 2002 and February 2005, into film
censorship in independent India at an important
juncture of its history.

In the year 2001, India's Central Board of Film
Certification completed 50 years of its chequered
existence, having been established in 1951 as the
Central Board of Film Censorship.

Then, the year 2002 marked the 50th anniversary of
the Indian Cinematographic Act 1952. However,
historically speaking, film censorship in India has
been in existence since 1920, having originated
from the Cinematograph Act 1918, the colonial
precedessor of the 1952 Act.

Although I undertook a full-fledged but separate
enquiry on film censorship in India's colonial
period in the course of my PhD dissertation a few
years ago, I have consciously refrained from
integrating its details into the present treatise.
I have briefly touched upon its essential features
only -- in order for them to put the eventual
discourse about the post-independence scenario in
proper perspective. To me, details of the
pre-independence phenomenon belong to an
independent discourse, one that should be
approached separately.... (p. ix)

CONTACT THE AUTHOR: someswarbhowmik at gmail.com
--
FN * http://fredericknoronha.wordpress.com http://twitter.com/fn
"Without a struggle, there can be no progress." - Frederick Douglass




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