From Adab to Film: Urdu Film Journals in India (1930- 1950)

In this talk, we explore the entangled history of the Urdu press with film journalism and examine their role in the creation of a cinematic public sphere.
The place of film journalism in the matrix of cinema and its networks of distribution, circulation and consumption cannot be overstated. By the 1930s, film journals had become part and parcel of the complex of cinema consumption. The intersection between - and transformations of - literary and cinematic cultures effected by commercial printing produced a series of complex negotiations. Through the specific cases of the Urdu film journals Film, Sham‘ā, Film Stage and Nigārkhāna, we look at the structure of these journals and ask: How were they similar to or different from contemporary film journals in other languages? Can we think of the Urdu film journal as an extension of the literary, i.e. amalgamating adab (literature, etiquette) with film? Mapping the profound influence of literary journals on Urdu film journals, we attempt to gauge the ways in which these journals were responding to and expressing a continued engagement with notions of akhlāq (moral conduct) and iṣlāḥ (correction), which were central to contemporary articulations on reform and morality.
Sarah Rahman Niazi is a Doctoral Researcher with the Centre for Research and Education in Arts and Media (CREAM) at the University of Westminster, London. Her work is focused on the intersections between language, literature and cinema. She received a M. Phil degree for “Cinema and the Reinvention of the Self: Women performers in the Bombay film industry (1925- 47)" from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Her work has been published in journals Wide Screen and Culture Unbound, and in books by Sage and Routledge, among others. She works as an Assistant Editor of Moving Image Review and Art Journal (MIRAJ, Intellect Books).