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Dr Ashvin Immanuel Devasundaram, MA, PhD

Ashvin Immanuel

Reader in Global Cinemas

Email: a.devasundaram@qmul.ac.uk
Room Number: Arts One 1.01A

Profile

Reader in Global Cinemas

Whilst specialising in World Cinemas, particularly new independent Indian Cinema, emerging cinemas from South Asia, the Middle East, Latin America and Africa, my teaching and research interests are open to transdisciplinary and intercultural exploration. I am also interested in intersections of cinematic representations with topical themes and alternative discourses, particularly through the prism of philosophy, politics, drama, visual art, creative industries, film festivals, postcolonialism, postmodernism, decolonisation, migration, urban violence, LGBTQ+ issues, marginalised and minority narratives and subalternity.

My monograph India's New Independent Cinema: Rise of the Hybrid (Routledge Advances in Film Studies, 2016) and edited volume Indian Cinema Beyond Bollywood: The New Independent Cinema Revolution (Routledge, 2018) are the world’s first books on new Indian Indie cinema. Completing my book trilogy on the topic, Indian Indies: A Guide to New Independent Indian Cinema (with a foreword by Shabana Azmi) was published by Routledge in 2022. I have also co-edited the anthology South Asian Diasporic Cinema and Theatre: Re-visiting Screen and Stage in the New Millennium (Rawat Publications, 2017).

I am currently Principal Investigator on an AHRC-funded India-UK research project (2024-27) – Connecting Creative Industries and Cultural Heritage: India-UK Film Festival Federation, Youth Curation and Community Co-creation, involving five film festivals and four Co-Investigators.

I am actively engaged in film festival curation as Associate Director of the UK Asian Film Festival - London (UKAFF) and I founded the Edinburgh edition of the festival at the Filmhouse, in 2016. I have led initiatives including the annual Emerging Curators Lab (ECL), International South Asian Film Festivals Conference in 2021, annual delegate networking event at the BFI London Film Festival, and the BFI Open Day: Creative Minds of Tomorrow industry workshop. I also directed the documentary film Movies, Memories, Magic (2018) as lead researcher on a Heritage Lottery-funded project – Memories Through Cinema, capturing British South Asian communities’ recollections of cinema and contributions to cultural heritage.

I have explored intersections between moving images, urban transformations, cultural heritage, colonial/postcolonial histories and diverse communities in locations spanning India, South Africa, Bhutan, Singapore and Brazil. I was part of the Cinemas of the Global South: Towards a Southern Aesthetics filmmaker/scholar symposium held at Wits University, Johannesburg and contributed a chapter to the subsequent eponymous edited collection. I have led British Academy-supported international interdisciplinary symposia in Brasilia and London, which led to the establishing of an international interdisciplinary research network around global urban violence and its impact on marginalised communities, through the lens of film and media, built environment, policing, migration and politics. I am lead editor on a co-edited volume Urban Violence and Marginalised Communities: Multidisciplinary Interpretations (forthcoming from UCL Press in 2025).

I am member of the AHRC-funded South Asian Cinema and Video on Demand research network, investigating the rise of digital streaming platforms in the region. I have also contributed to an international research network Bergman Out of Focus: Translations, Receptions & Interpretations, and an associated edited collection – Ingmar Bergman Out of Focus: Film Cultures and International Reception, charting Ingmar Bergman’s global legacy in contemporary Global South/North contexts. I previously contributed to a journal special issue on Bergman World: Global Perspectives on the Iconic Swedish Filmmaker's Work.

I delivered keynote lectures at the I World Cinema International Conference 2021 organised by University Complutense of Madrid, Community Cinema Conference and Film Society Awards 2017 organised by Cinema For All (British Federation of Film Societies), the Deutsches Film Museum during the Frankfurt New Generations Independent Indian Film Festival in 2022 and 2016, and the 12th Annual Phalke Memorial Lecture 2015 at the Indian High Commission's Nehru Centre in London. I also delivered presentations at the BFI Satyajit Ray Season 2022 and the International Satyajit Ray Congress in 2021. I am on the advisory board for Political Cinemas book series, Edinburgh University Press, and advisory board member of OCEÁNIDE, journal of SELICUP (the Spanish Society for the Study of Popular Culture).

I received the Edinburgh University Literary Award in 2012 for my analysis of Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman's La Folie Almayer. I have worked in the past as a television documentary researcher and filmmaker with Channel 4. I am a BBC Academy Expert Voice in Cultural Studies and Visual Arts and was an advisory panel member for BFI India on Film – part of the UK-India Year of Culture 2017. I am a mentor on the B-MEntor cross-institutional academic mentoring scheme for academics and researchers from Black, Asian and other global majority backgrounds.

Some of the themes from my academic and philosophical introspections spill over into music - I compose songs and play lead guitar with transglobal neo-progressive rock project -The Multitude.

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