On Cinematic Transformations, Gender, and Religion: An Interview with Ashish Avikunthak

Abstract

In this interview, Ashish Avikunthak, an Indian independent filmmaker discusses some of the key aspects of his cinematic craft, which he defines as Cinema of Prayoga. He elaborates on oft-contested issues such as non-normative representations of the body in his films, film censorship in India and market dynamics of digital contents that are flourishing in postmillennial India. Avikunthak argues that because of a stringent censorship regime, India has not really seen a truly independent cinematic work. This, for him, is especially true for commercial popular cinema which has been cautious, conservative and even obsequious. In the interview he claims that the digital platforms are not independent of the logic of contemporary market rationality. They are very much part of “digital capitalism,” which in turn is deeply embedded within the speculative logic of “finance capitalism”—a stage of capitalism in which economic and political domination is exercised by financial institutions or financiers rather than by industrial capitalists. SVOD platforms, according to him, are not spaces for innovative forms of cinema. Ideologically, he concludes, these platforms continue to proliferate retrograde version of earlier forms of cinematic representations—feudalistic, patriarchal, hyper nationalistic and brazenly narcissistic.