The political in Indian documentary film: Material and aesthetic interventions, post-economic liberalization

Contemporary Indian documentary film is pushing against its historical position as a state-controlled medium of creating and consolidating state hegemonies. Film-makers seek to problematize dominant discourses through the architecture of the filmic narrative but also the aesthetic crafting of the documentary film form. Politics is thus embedded within the construction of the film and multiple forms of knowledge are possible with each reading. As a community of citizens, film-makers also make material interventions in the social world in order to create space for dissent and debate. Through text analysis of two recent films, Nero's Guests and Development at Gunpoint, and the history of the film-maker collective Vikalp (The Alternative), I explore the dispersed modes of political knowledge and intervention being articulated by Indian film-makers.