Paper short abstract:

This paper in talking about the cinema making impetus of a working class town would like to argue how local working class cinema is as much a question of work as a film making aesthetic and one cannot separate the two.

Paper long abstract:

This paper hinting at a certain representation of India through its working class cinema, much celebrated through a glorification of cinema like that produced in the power loom town of Malegaon would like to interrogate who does this aesthetic appeal to? In celebrating this aesthetic as universal what do we stand to efface? What does it entail to look at India through the lens of a digitally produced "marginalised" cinema making ethos?

Taking this lens of "Malegaon," the quintessential working class town as a point of departure, I would like to argue that Malegaon cinema has flourished and has managed to thwart the onslaught of large commercial enterprises much like its textile trade because of its inimitable working-class cinema-making fabric. While my subjective appreciation excludes me from the larger public endorsement of such cinema in terms of its content, I cannot deny the peculiar position I occupy in being unable to detach myself from the process of this cinema production. Taking off from this engagement, this paper, through a very brief ethnography of a cinema space in an industrial setting and accounts of two individuals who belong to this space, attempts to understand Malegaon cinema in terms of its construction, in its coming to being and the conditions of being which allows for such cinema to become what it does. This process of making what I call Malegaon cinema - the "unaesthetic object" from my vantage point and the conditions of its production is the central thematic of this paper.