Men, masculinities and symbolic violence in recent Indonesian cinema

This article investigates images of men and masculinities in post-New Order Indonesian popular culture, focusing on a recent and path-breaking Indonesian film, Kuldesak. The theoretical sociology of Pierre Bourdieu is utilised to suggest that if Indonesian women are to be assisted in their efforts to resist the gender inequality of Indonesia's patriarchal gender regime, then the social gendering of men and masculinity must also be understood.

Jaisa Desh, Waisa Vesh? Exploratory notes on the representations of adivasis in popular Hindi cinema

This paper seeks to discuss specific examples of Adivasi representation in Indian cinema, particularly popular Hindi cinema or ‘Bollywood’ (as opposed to ‘art’ or ‘parallel’ cinema). This choice of popular Hindi cinema is an attempt to explore the ways in which it has distilled and codified the representations of ‘other’ groups for a mass audience. Popular Hindi films have an unmatched circulation and pre-eminence (Prasad, 1998) in India, making the impact of their representations important to consider. Commercial interests of popular Hindi films are paramount, their producers and directors are generally from the upper castes and classes of Indian society. In the push for commercial interests and popular storylines, adequate representations of Adivasis, and as scholars (Vasudev & Lenglet, 1983; Bagchi, 1996; Subramanyam, 1996; Gopalan, 2000; Vridi, 2003) have pointed out women and other social groups, remain stereotypical. Mainstream Hindi cinema, even in its post-colonial phase, has not provided images of various cultural groups in India which reflect their lived reality. It is this cinematic marginalisation and cultural stereotyping, which will be explored further. This paper is a preliminary exploration and will look at particular examples of representation in Hindi films, including Naagin (1954), Ajantrik (1957), Madhumati (1958), Yeh Gulistan Hamara (1972), Lal Salaam (2002), and Chak De! (2007). It is aimed that this exploration will provide a foundation for further research into representations in Hindi cinema and the wider discourses of power, politics and inequality in Indian society.

New cinema history and the computational turn

This paper outlines how the digitisation of both the film industry and contemporary research practices bear on the work of the new cinema historian. How might the opportunities presented by an unprecedented proliferation of data for example, also challenge the unspoken assumptions and ordinary practices of conventional film studies research? And how might the 'computational turn' present opportunities (and challenges) for a revisionist cinema history at the intersection of qualitative historiographies (focussed on the social experience of the cinema) and quantitative research approaches such as data mining, empirical analysis and digital visualisations?

What is a cinema? Death, closure and the database

This chapter explores the possible ontological questions and epistemological propositions that arise from detailed empirical research into cinema closures. Repeated pronouncements of the ‘Death of Cinema’ in the wake of technological, social and industrial change serve to reinforce the coincidence of ‘death’ with a type of ‘closure’. The evocation of a ‘crisis’ in the cinema is ordinarily articulated within the terms of specific cultural concerns around transience and transformation in the social experience of the cinema. However, rather than adding another chapter to the apocalyptic historiography of the cinema this paper proposes instead the constitutive importance of ‘closure’ as a critical tool for rethinking our defining assumptions about cinema(s). Specifically, the chapter will demonstrate how the conceptual granularity entailed in the development of a detailed database of venue openings and closings (the Cinema and Audiences in Australia Project database) can in turn lead to a fundamental reconsideration of the ontology of the cinema itself.

Counting the cost: the impact of cinema ticket prices in Australia

The authors discuss the change in cinema ticket price and its effect on audience perception on cinema attendance in Australia. Topics discussed include the comparison of ticket prices in Australia to countries such as the U.S., Japan, and New Zealand, the reason of high ticket prices in Australia such as high wages in theatre operation and piracy, and the drop of cinema admission as result of high ticket prices. They mention the social equity issues raised by the high cost of cinema tickets.