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Innovation
The discipline of Film Studies was born out of an energetic
reform of the Humanities. A product of the theoretical ferment
of the 1960s and 70s, it had an inter-disciplinary character
from the beginning - its texts and methods were drawn from
cultural theory, linguistics, literary scholarship and the
social sciences. Film Studies at Jadavpur has tried to update
its curricula to incorporate the new scholarship emerging
in response to the developments in international film and
media practices.
A
time has come when we feel it necessary to explore the new
spaces and methods of learning that digital technology and
satellite-based communications have brought about. There is
now a need to open out the class-teaching format into a laboratory
location, where the proliferating forms of media - the everyday
'cinema effect' - can be studied alongside cinema itself.
The new forms pose a challenge to the older classroom pedagogy.
The Lab will eventually prompt a curricular reform in the
Department itself, a reform that cannot be fully visualized
unless a wide sharing of concerns and an intensive engagement
with the new media take place. This engagement has started taking shape
in the Lab, in the form of bridging the gap between criticism and film/media
practice, making hands-on work itself generate forms of
intellectual inquiry.
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