Paper short abstract:

In this paper, I will explore on basis of own ethnographic research with Santal and Birhor people, if there are socio-cultural aspects supporting film viewing in this village, thereby focussing on romancing.

Paper long abstract:

In the past decade South Asia saw the emerging of multiple smallscale film industries, producing vcds with popular films and music video clips in "indigenous" languages. The unfolding of these VCD circulations could be explained by the global success of "indigeneity" as an assertive category, conflating with an increasing accessibility of digital video technology by smallscale entrepreneurs.

I will, however, explore socio-cultural aspects of viewing popular Santali films in an "indigenous" village of Odisha. A conjoint village video night namely enters the cultural space of dance nights, which are within Birhor and Santal society "traditional" occasions for the youth to flirt, and thus is signified with the (hidden) attraction to provide a space for courting. At the same, a film carries a flavour of illicitness as love stories are depicted. A young woman then, requesting a film by an organizer of a video night, not necessarily intends on film watching, but might deliberately transgress an appropriate behaviour of her towards a man, creating a moment of attraction.

I will argue that film viewing in the village does not reflect a single-sided process due to the circulation of a (new) medium. I would stress rather that a cultural embedding of manyfold ways of engaging with films - which stands in a reciprocal reference to practices far beyond films - is decisive to let films continously reach into the village, and thereby shapes and upholds media circulation and its routes.