This is a PhD by practice, consisting of a documentary film, Village Tales, and an accompanying thesis; I locate my practice in the context of documentary and participatory filmmaking. In this research I want, as an experienced documentary filmmaker, to bring together the techniques of both ethnographic and participatory filmmaking, with approaches used in documentary production. The former with its emphasis on the voice of, in this case, rural women in India, and the latter with its concern to engage an audience through narrative and imagery. The research question is ‘to what extent can a combination of observational documentary techniques, video diaries and participatory filmmaking methods be used to explore the interior and everyday lives of women from another culture?’ The thesis covers the period of time from 2008 to 2014, which includes research, filmmaking, scripting, editing and screening the documentary to different audiences. The documentary explores what the anthropologist Lila Abu-Lughod (1991) calls ‘dailiness’; that is, films built around the exploration of relationships, feelings and experiences. Leslie Devereaux uses the term ‘sticking close to experience’ when describing this attention to everyday life (1995:72). My documentary is situated in the everyday because the women work primarily as housewives and mothers and the ‘everyday’ is an important site for the construction, maintenance and challenging of gender roles and power. More specifically, Village Tales is concerned with a regional government community initiative in rural India, set up to train local women as video reporters so they can make films about subjects important to them; these films are then screened to other villagers to raise community awareness. However, my documentary is also about some of these women’s daily lives as I asked four of them if they would turn their cameras on to their everyday lives and make video diaries about their own personal concerns. The exegesis charts the creative and intellectual terrain that the documentary project as a whole explores. It includes an historical account of participatory filmmaking in the developing world and the use of video diaries, by broadcast television in the UK. I ask that the accompanying DVD is watched after reading Chapters 1-3 of the thesis.

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This thesis presents a qualitative analysis of the connections between meanings made from discourses of gender, sexuality and ethnicity in commercial Hindi films and the construction of gender, sexual and ethnic identity by young adult viewers. While expressing an understanding of cinema texts and audiences as always shaped by and responding to complex intersections of social, psychological and historical events, it also identifies and describes mechanisms of pleasure and discourses of gender ideology in Hindi films from the points of view of 'academic' and 'ordinary' viewers. Original photographs, observations and interviews at cinema halls and transcripts from in-depth interviews with young viewers from diverse social, linguistic and religious backgrounds in Bombay and London provide the bulk of the data. Critical discourse analysis and aspects of social semiotics and Screen theory provide the tools for analysis of the data. This study suggests that young viewers respond to films from a variety of intersecting subject positions; they rarely experience film texts as unitary and organic entities, treating certain sequences as far more significant than others. This study also finds strong connections between the discourses of gender, sexuality and politics articulated by or read into Hindi films and those voiced by young South Asian viewers. Saliently, though certain viewers use sequences in Hindi films as justifications for their political beliefs and/or private actions, others who express similar enjoyment, ridicule or despise the meanings they read into film sequences, remaining wary of their perceived 'effects'. Many Hindi films may be read as ambiguous or overt interventions in conflicts over religious, national, gender and sexual identity, and some young viewers clearly show a predisposition to what can only be called certain films' authoritarian or fascistic imaginaries. For others, pleasure and involvement in aspects of these films does not preclude skepticism or ideological critique.

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Bollywood cinema continues to evolve. As a result, it has become a transnational/cultural role player for Indian audiences worldwide. There has always been a strong link between Bollywood cinema and Indian society. Over the years, it has contributed to the dialogue on women’s roles and position in Indian society. In the past, Bollywood filmmakers were faithful to representations of women who were bound by patriarchal structures in the sense that they were expected to be loyal to ancient Indian traditions and belief-systems. Based on the increase in Indian migration, contemporary Bollywood filmmakers are now catering to the demands of the Indian diaspora and therefore, a more global market. The impact of transnationalism on the representation of women in many Bollywood films has further added to the creation of open spaces for the Bollywood heroine. In this regard, the films of auteur director Karan Johar are valuable because they provide audiences with material that suggests re-thinking patriarchal structures in a transnational world. This study will examine the representation of women in three selected films of Johar within the framework of feminist theory (Indian context). The impact that transnationalism has had on the Indian diaspora and the manner in which this translates into the narratives and representations of female characters in Bollywood films will be discussed. / Afrikaans & Theory of Literature / D. Litt. et Phil. (Theory of Literature)

Bollywood cinema continues to evolve. As a result, it has become a transnational/cultural role player for Indian audiences worldwide. There has always been a strong link between Bollywood cinema and Indian society. Over the years, it has contributed to the dialogue on women’s roles and position in Indian society. In the past, Bollywood filmmakers were faithful to representations of women who were bound by patriarchal structures in the sense that they were expected to be loyal to ancient Indian traditions and belief-systems. Based on the increase in Indian migration, contemporary Bollywood filmmakers are now catering to the demands of the Indian diaspora and therefore, a more global market. The impact of transnationalism on the representation of women in many Bollywood films has further added to the creation of open spaces for the Bollywood heroine. In this regard, the films of auteur director Karan Johar are valuable because they provide audiences with material that suggests re-thinking patriarchal structures in a transnational world. This study will examine the representation of women in three selected films of Johar within the framework of feminist theory (Indian context). The impact that transnationalism has had on the Indian diaspora and the manner in which this translates into the narratives and representations of female characters in Bollywood films will be discussed. / Afrikaans and Theory of Literature / D. Litt. et Phil. (Theory of Literature)