Paper short abstract:

This article encapsulates a history of social justice filmmaking in South Asia with regard to what is being heralded as the Indian documentary wave since 2021-till date. It will examine feminist filmmaking processes such as the one undertaken by the author for a film titled 'Survey City.'

Paper long abstract:

This article encapsulates a history of social justice filmmaking in India or South Asia more broadly with regard to what is being heralded as the Indian documentary wave since 2021-till date. It asks what role funding institutions and grant-making bodies play who tend to cater to their audiences more than the instincts of justice that tend to motivate filmmakers who pursue stories about underrepresented communities or social justice. It compares these films to the ones produced by feminist processes, feminist filmmaking collectives and initiatives. It will do so through ethnographic enquiry, to locate the source of subjectivity as a process of articulating or empathising with socially marginalised and underrepresented perspectives. The article will complicate the discussion on the process of making social justice films, and delve into the complexity of form and content vs. addressing social issues, as well as the sociological aspects of a non-fiction film and its production. In this version, the article will specifically examine feminist interventions in documentary film in India, as a means to truth and not objectivity.

A previous version of this paper is published here: https://hasp.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/journals/dasta/article/view/27347/26826