“The World of South Asia” lecture series welcomes Professor Bhaskar Sarkar (UC-Santa Barbara) who will deliver the talk entitled “Cosmoplastics, or, Bollywood’s Global Gesture.”
Indian cinema, more specifically the Bombay-based Hindi cinema industry, is now widely referred to as Bollywood. What work has this portmanteau term been doing as the industry has “gone global”? Drawing on salient aspects of Bombay cinema’s industrial reorganization and aesthetic modulations, this talk will seek to develop a theory of cosmoplastics as the art of forging worlds from shifting relations and local perspectives. At stake is 1) an understanding of the political domain that is shaped by the sheer plasticity of cinema, and 2) the recognition of “the global” as always locally grounded, always multiple.

“Cosmoplastics, or, Bollywood’s Global Gesture” is sponsored by the UWM Film Studies program and The Vilas Trust.

This event is free and open to the public. The talk will be held in UWM’s Curtin Hall, Room 368.