South Asian cinema and video online distribution (VOD) research network

Sharing a colonial past under British rule and separated by regional tensions since 1948, South Asian nations have all been equally exposed to Hindi cinema for decades. Within the region, Hindi cinema made in India has been simultaneously a shared medium and a modern form of cultural colonisation. Video online distribution (VOD) is now beginning to destabilise this film industrial configuration, enabling the global circulation of films from South Asian countries that, until recently, were confined to the domestic market.

Tension between South Asian countries mark both relations within the South Asian diaspora in Britain and public attitudes towards South Asian diasporans. Today, however, VOD makes it possible for Indian audiences to watch, for instance, Pakistani or Bangladeshi films, even if movement of people and goods between the two countries, and inter-diasporan relations, are at best difficult. But this new form of cultural exchange is entirely mediated by video online distribution companies (VODs) and their commercial interests. The purpose of this network is to enable filmmakers and scholars from South Asia to begin to explore the possibilities of regional dialogue offered by this is new cinematic ground.

Two features characterise the growth of VODs like Netflix, Amazon, Hotstar, Iflix or Viu: the expansion of their geographic reach and their diversification into local content production. VODs have adopted the commissioning and production of films or series in local languages with local crews as a market penetration strategy. VODs' claim is that this enables filmmakers marginalised within the domestic industry to gain international exposure. The general assumption is that this, in turn, helps challenge received ideas about local cultures and identities. In reality research is at too early a stage to substantiate either.

Most research on VOD is sponsored by the companies or their investors. More objective studies have been undertaken by public advisory agencies in the Global North, which are, however, of little practical use when applied to national cinemas in South Asia. Existing academic research examines VOD as an industrial complex through a political economy of the media approach within which films, their aesthetics and cultural specificity are marginal concerns. This type of research documents the extent to which VODs define the limits within which independent filmmakers work. What is missing is research on how filmmakers move within those limits and how this, in turn, shapes the films they make. These conditions demarcate independent cinema - its content and aesthetics - and, with it, also our imaginings of local identities.

By bringing together filmmakers from different South Asian countries and scholars, and combining theoretical approaches with the experience of creative industry professionals, this network will enable research that explores how VODs' operation (distribution, commissioning and production) is shaping ideas of South Asian identity and regional relations. It will be the first network to research VODs' operation from this methodological and geographic perspective. Networking will also stimulate transnational dialogue among nationals who share common historical and cultural influences but have entertained conflictual political relations. Third, networking will enable us to address questions of content, aesthetics and representation from different professional windows, implementing an interdisciplinary, comparative methodology that, based on localised angles, will be of relevance to the study of VOD's impact on independent cinema also in other regions.