Paper short abstract:

Mani Kaul´s film narrates a "Doppelgänger" story set in a rural environment. The analysis of the film shall focus on the ways in which the depiction of the interconnectedness of the familiar and the uncanny results in disclosing the horror implied in gender relations.

Paper long abstract:

The film narrates the story of a young wife who is left alone in the house of her in-laws when her husband has to go away for business. After some time she is visited by a ghost who appears to her as the double, the Doppelgänger, of her husband. When the "real" husband returns the "other" husband has to be removed. The paper deals with way in which the familiar and the uncanny are intertwined both in narrative and at visual and acoustic levels. It shall be asked who is whose ghost, and what kinds of horrors are dealt with at different levels of the plot and the imagery created in the movie.Here the focus will be on gender-relations and the issue of the ghost´s body. Comparative perspectives on the film will be discussed with respect to the Bollywood movie "Paheli" (2005).