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Books Written by NETPAC Members

Aditya Wednesday December 12, 2018

Recently two books have been written by NETPAC Members. One is on Pakistani Cinema and other on Bangladeshi Cinema. 

Journey Through Lens: Pakistani Cinema 

Authors: Aijaz Gul & Jamal Sohail 

Publisher: Lok Virsa 

Book Cover 01  

National Institute of Folk & Traditional Heritage, Islamabad, January 2018 

This book focuses primarily on the cinema of Pakistan which is an essential part of the country’s cultural heritage. It tracks the history of cinema in the subcontinent from 1906 when the first film shots from France were screened in a hotel in Mumbai. However, it does more than tell the history of Pakistani cinema; it highlights the best films from the fifties and beyond. Turning the pages of the book the reader can take a walk down the memory lane - sometimes in nostalgic black and white and sometimes in digital glamorous coloured images. 

Journey Through Lens works both as a reference book and a text book. It provides crucial knowledge about films. It not only caters to the need of film historians and critics but is also a valuable source of information for media/film students and enthusiasts. Since not much has been written on film industry in Pakistan, this book is a modest attempt to take the readers on a joyful ride with laughter, action, romance and some moist eyes. For those who are no longer with the industry, their labour, love and passion in the form of films that they left behind will remain with the Pakistani Cinema for years to come. 

Aijaz Gul 

Aijaz Photo  

Aijaz Gul got his early education from Aithchison and F.C.College, Lahore, and did his BA and MA in Film Studies from the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. He has been writing on cinema for local and foreign publications and has published four books. As a member of NETPAC and FIPRESCI, he has attended numerous international film festivals as jury chairman and member. 

Jamal Sohail 

Jamal Sohail

Jamal Sohail is a double gold medallist and a graduate in Media Studies. He is an entrepreneur and a filmmaker and also teaches Media Studies and Film production at school and university levels. He has attended numerous national and international film festivals as a jury member. 

 

Bangladesh Cinema and National Identity: In search of the Modern? 

Book Cover   2

Author: Zakir Hossain Raju 

Publisher: Routledge, 2015 

Throughout the 20th and early 21st centuries, cinema has been adopted as a popular cultural institution in Bangladesh. It has also been the period for the articulation of modern nationhood and cultural identity of Bengali Muslims in the country. This book analyses the relationship between cinema and modernity, and  provides a narrative of the uneven process that produced the idea of ‘Bangladeshi cinema’. 

This book investigates the roles of a non-Western ‘national’ film industry in Asia in constructing nationhood and identity within colonial and postcolonial predicaments. Drawing on the idea of cinema as a public sphere and the post-colonial notion of formation of the ‘Bangladesh’ nation, interactions between cinema and middle-class Bengali Muslims in different social and political matrices are analysed. The author explores how the conflict among different social groups turned Bangladeshi cinema into a site of contesting identities. In particular, he illustrates the connections between film production and reception in Bangladesh and a variety of nationalist constructions of Bengali Muslim identity. Questioning and debunking the usual notions of ‘Bangladesh’ and ‘cinema’, this book positions the cinema of Bangladesh within a transnational frame. Starting with how to locate the ‘beginning’ of the second Bengali language cinema in colonial Bengal, the author completes the investigation by identifying a global Bangladeshi cinema in the early 21st century. 

The first major academic study of this large and vibrant national cinema, this book demonstrates that Bangladeshi cinema worked as different ‘public spheres’ for different ‘publics’ throughout the 21st century and beyond. Filling a niche in Global Film and Media Studies and South Asian Studies, it will be of interest to scholars and students of these disciplines. 

Zakir Hossain Raju 

Image Zakir Hossain Raju is Professor in Film and Media Studies and Dean of the School of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences at Independent University, Bangladesh (IUB). He is the first Bangladeshi scholar who obtained PhD in Cinema Studies--earned from Melbourne in 2004. He taught at La Trobe and Monash University in Australia as well as at the University of Dhaka and Monash University, Malaysia. He was a Research Fellow in the Dept. of Cinema Studies at the Korean National University of Arts (KARTS) in Seoul during 2013-14. He has published many research papers on theory and history of Asian cinema in journals including Comparative Studies in South Asia, Africa and the Middle East (CSSAAME), Screening the Past, Journal of Chinese Cinemas, Cinemaya and South Asian Journal and in volumes published by Sage, Intellect, Routledge, Macmillan, Berg, Scarecrow and Oxford University Press.

Interview

Supriya Suri's Interview with Muhiddin Muzaffar

Director Muhiddin Muzaffar (1) 2 Min

1. I entered the cinema through the theatre. I was an actor in our local theatre called Kanibadam, named after Tuhfa Fozilova. After working for five years, I decided to do a theatre director course. I graduated with honors and became a director. We successfully staged performances at international festivals.

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