ABSTRACT
Through a purely ethnographic account of a specific contemporary film festival and a specific media collective in charge of the organisation of various film screenings in Bangalore, this chapter seeks to investigate what precisely occurs when films and filmmakers meet their audiences. Accordingly, it shows that as happened with early documentary film forms in colonial India, documentary film practices act as ‘cultural performances’. In line with Victor Turner’s (1988) idea, ‘cultural performances’ are seen in this chapter not as ‘reflections’ but as active ‘expressions’ of cultures. Films as cultural performances take place in what the author names ‘sites of cultural activism’ that is, the loci in which one can engage with politics outside state and media power and the sites in which a dialogic relationship between films, filmmakers and film audiences becomes possible. The analysis developed in this chapter is mainly centred around the screening activities undertaken by a specific media collective, Pedestrian Pictures, and the ethnographic engagement with a specific film festival, Vibgyor 2009. Through these examples, the chapter finally shows how ‘utopistic’ ideas of the 1950s (that is, thinking documentaries reach Indian audiences thanks to intermediary figures) have become increasingly real.
