Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav (AKAM) Lecture

Topic: Alleppey Vincent ( 1938- 1984) : A Practical Utopian

Abstract : 

Alleppey Vincent was an important presence in early film history of Kerala, waring the hats of an actor and producer and yet Vincent’s work and influence have been underestimated, In particular, his broad-ranging vision for the role of cooperatives in film production has not been fully appreciated. Vincent along with the film journalist Chelangat Gopalakrishnan and others established the Ajanta Film Studio in 1953, the first ever film cooperative in India. The cooperative and its subsequent attempt at producing films is a fecund site to understand practices forged outside the economizing logic of the market. By closely reading biographic material and contemporary periodicals the paper attempts to identify and understand the discursive structure of economic activities from the informal, illegal and artisanal, that morphed into a viable financial object and an orchestrated regional film economy. In the early decades of Indian nationalist development, this practical Utopia of a cooperative movement in cinema , I argue was an attempt to reintegrate economics, revitalize democracy, and recalibrate the role for cooperatives in a new socialist cultural imagination

Bindu Menon is Associate Professor of Media Studies at Azim Premji University, Bangalore. Her research lies at the intersection of Film and Media History, Media and Migration, Sound Media , Media Infrastructures and Indian Ocean Studies. She has published extensively in these areas of research in peer reviewed journals including Biograph, Bioscope, South Asian Film & Media, Journal of Creative Communication, South Asian Popular Culture, Middle Eastern Journal of Culture and Communication and Seminar-India. She is the co-editor of Film Studies: An Introduction ( Worldview Books, 2022) . Her book manuscript titled Lost Cinemas: Publics, Senses and Cinema( Travancore 1900-1950) is under review. She serves in the Editorial Board of Studies in South Asian Film and Media (Intellect Journals, UK) and is the founder member of Middle Eastern Moving Image Collective