Ritika Kaushik

Assistant Professor in Film & Television Studies PGT Admissions Email: ritika.kaushik@warwick.ac.uk Room: A1.34 University of Warwick Coventry, CV4 7HS

 

About:

I am a film historian and videoessayist with a specialization in documentary cinema and South Asian cinema. Before joining the University of Warwick, I was a Postdoctoral Research Scholar in the Research Training Group "Configurations of Film" at Goethe University, Frankfurt. I received my PhD in Cinema and Media Studies from the University of Chicago. I have also worked as a Research Associate at the Sarai Program, Center for the Study of Developing Societies program and hold an M.Phil. in Cinema Studies from Jawaharlal Nehru University. I am an elected member of the Governing Council of Visible Evidence, an international community of scholars and practitioners of documentary film and nonfiction media.

Research Interests:

The primary focus of my academic and videographic research is on the history, aesthetics, infrastructures, archives, and afterlives of state sponsored documentaries in India. 

Currently working on: a monograph which traces the operation of state power and bureaucratic practices at India’s primary institution of state sponsored documentary filmmaking; co-editing a book project “India as Method” with meson press; a journal article about the woman’s question in official documentary films in India; a roundtable discussion on Indian documentary for the edited volume Shift Focus: Reframing the Indian New Waves  (Oxford University Press); and a book chapter for the edited volume Cinema and the Indian National Emergency (Bloomsbury). 

Supervision:

I am interested in supervising projects on South Asian cinema, documentary cinema, cinema and archives, sponsored filmmaking/useful cinema, and videographic research.  

Publications:

My writings have appeared in Bioscope: South Asian Screen Studies (2017, 2020), Economic and Political Weekly (2020, 2022), Accidental Archivism (meson press), and Docalogue. My practice-based research is rooted in my training and experiences in film making, which in addition to my own projects include my work as Assistant Director on a major Bollywood feature film. My videographic work has been featured at the Pesaro Film Festival's Rimontaggi Competition, the journals NECSUS and Tecmerin, and is forthcoming in an online publication by the LodZ Film School. 

Public Engagement:

• Introduction to Mahanagar (1963), Hommage to Satyajit Ray, Arsenal Berlin, 30th July 2024. 
• Introduction and Post-screening conversation with filmmaker Ruchir Joshi, Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum (DFF), Frankfurt, 19th June, 2024. 
• Co-curator, Lecture and Film Series 2023-24:” "An Eye for the World: The Cinema of Satyajit Ray," Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum (DFF), Frankfurt. 
• A Talk on Akaash/Ether by Velu Viswanadhan, “Echoes of South Asia” Film Series, Berlin, Sinema Transtopia, June 2023 
• Featured on Podcast: “The State and Filmmaking in India,” TIF Talkies Podcast, India Forum: A Journal-Magazine on Contemporary Issue, 2022
• Introduction and Post-Screening discussion with filmmaker Anand Patwardhan, director of Jai Bhim Comrade (2011), University of Chicago, Film Studies Center, 2022. 
• Curator, film series ‘"Phantoms of the Past,” films by Ayisha Abraham, Comfort Film, Chicago, 2021. 
• Curator, film series “Emergency Cinema: films from Films Division of India (1960s and 1970s),” Sarai-Centre for the Society Development Studies, New Delhi, 2016. 
• “Experimental Films from Films Division of India” Mumbai International Film Festival, Talk on the film series curated by Ashish Avikunthak, 2014.