Filmmaker Kumar Shahani has said that it is time for filmmakers to focus on the diasporic experience across the world given the changes in the contemporary political landscape across the grobe.
The award-winning filmmaker, who was addressing the valedictory session of a three-day national seminar on ‘Diaspora Reimagines: The Politics of Representation’ organised by Kerala University’s Centre for Cultural Studies here on Friday, said that his own personal journey as a filmmaker had taken him to fascinating and, at the same time, disturbing aspects of diasporic experiences at different locales.
Addressing the seminar, J. Devika, feminist scholar, said the historical and contemporary cosmopolitan engagements of the feminist movement within Kerala had multiple exogenous linkages across history. In his address, T. T. Sreekumar, professor, Department of Communication, EFLU, Hyderabad, traced the specific cultural formation of Islamic home films and the cultural circuits navigated by them in the Muslim public spheres of Kerala and Middle East.
K.N. Harilal, member, State Planning Board, pointed out that the Malayali diaspora had played a vital role in the economic makeup of Malayali society in the past and the present.
Film critic C. S. Venkiteswaran discussed how diasporic flows across the world find representations and imaginations in the medium of cinema. K.K. Kunhammad, professor, Department of Studies in English, Kannur University, said there is need to address and reimagine diasporas and public spheres in terms of transnationality and virtual spaces. Literary critic P.K. Rajasekharan said there is need to redefine what constitutes a diasporic literary imagination given the fact that Malayalis across history have traversed multiple diasporic trajectories.
M. G. Radhakrishnan, editor-in-chief, Asianet News analysed the mutual engagements between the Malayali diaspora and the journalistic enterprise in Malayalam even as film critic G. P. Ramachandran inquired into the depiction of the popular figure of the Gulf Malayali in mainstream movies. Syed Ibrahim, director, Goethe–Zentrum Trivandrum, said that in contemporary times diaspora studies could not but look at exile and refugee experience as they manifest in the concept of the fleeing crowds.