ABSTRACT

This essay engenders its methodology by using the theory and practice of a master Indian avant-garde filmmaker, Kumar Shahani. It crafts a methodological tool as a conceptual lens with which to discuss Shahani's practice in Maya Darpan and Baz Lurhmann's in Australia. Through the yoking together of two divergent cinematic practices within the Asia Pacific zone of contact, this essay does two things: (1) Poses general questions about cinema and the conventions of critical thought and thereby departs from standard, habitual methodologies of Film Studies so as to make contact across disciplines. (2) Demonstrates how the categories of gender and modernity are engendered through cinematic dynamisms. In doing these, film as such is considered an indispensable and irresistible ally of thought, feeling and action.