Sudipto Basu
Member
Last Updated:
2022
Sudipto Basu is a second year PhD student in Film and Moving Image Studies, Concordia University. His ongoing research is about the entanglement of the Cold War-era discourses of population management with infrastructure projects and developmental experiments in the Global South, particularly India.
He is a research associate on the Against Catastrophe project (PI: Prof. Orit Halpern), which is a part of the Swiss National Science Foundation-funded Governing Through Design research cluster. He has previously worked on the intersections of experimental cinema since the Cold War, cybernetics and the Anthropocene; post-war Bombay cinema’s political economy and the experimental turn in Films Division India.
His written work has been published in APRJA, IIC Quarterly and Critical Collective, and a video essay he co-directed, Tracts of Dust (2018), has shown in Bangkok Biennial and Little Cinema International Festival, Kolkata, among other venues.
Degrees:
PhD Student in Film and Moving Image Studies | Concordia University | Montreal - Canada | Since 2021
M.Phil in Cinema Studies | Jawaharlal Nehru University | New Delhi - India | 2019
M.A. in Film Studies | Jadavpur University | Kolkata - India | 2017
B.Tech in Civil Engineering | National Institute of Technology | Durgapur - India | 2012
Awards:
Canso Scholarship for Excellence | Concordia University | Montreal - Canada | 2022
J.A. DeSeve Graduate Fellowship | Concordia University | Montreal - Canada | 2021-22
UGC-Senior Research Fellowship | Jawaharlal Nehru University | New Delhi - India | 2019-2021
UGC-Junior Research Fellowship | Jawaharlal Nehru University | New Delhi - India | 2017-2019
Publications:
“Early (European) Film Modernisms: The Legacy of the Interwar Film/Art Avant-Gardes.” | Film Studies: An Introduction, edited by Vebhuti Duggal, Bindu Menon and Spandan Bhattacharya | Worldview Publications | 2022.
With Özgün Eylül İşcen, and Geoffrey Aung – as Logistical (B)orders | “Refusal to be Refused: On Modes of Resistance to Logistical Capital in the Global South.” | Peer-Reviewed Newspaper, Vol 10 No. 1: Research Refusal | 2021
“Cynical Realism and the Immobility of the Contemporary.” | India International Centre Quarterly, Winter 2020–Spring 2021, Vol. 47, Nos. 3 & 4, Special Issue – ‘Indian Cinema Today and Tomorrow: Infrastructure, Aesthetics, Audiences’ | 2021
“On the Ends of the Network as a Zone of Friction (and Extraction).” | APRJA Vol. 9 No. 1: Research Networks | August 2020.
“With roots in kinship and stardom, how Bollywood continues to fuel nepotism despite being an 'industry'.” | Firstpost | August 3, 2020.
“The Sarkari ‘Information Film’ and its Discontents: Notes on experimental Films Division productions circa 1967-69.” | Critical Collective | February 17, 2020.
“Emerging from the Shadows: On the familial Camera Obscura in Naeem Mohaiemen’s dui.” | Critical Collective | October 22, 2019.
Presentations:
“KaraGarga: The Antinomies of a Private Torrenting Network.” | Platforms symposium | Configurations of Film - Goethe University, Frankfurt | 2022.
“Infrastructural Sabotage as Liberation of General Intellect.” | transmediale 2021
Research Refusal workshop | online | 2021.
“A Cinema of Geotrauma: On the Ambivalence of Demolition in Jia Zhangke’s Still Life (2006).” | Deleuze and Guattari World Congress 2020 | Centre for Culture Media & Governance - Jamia Millia Islamia, Delhi | 2020.
“The Ends of the Network as Frontiers of Extraction.” | transmediale 2020 Research Networks workshop - Berlin | 2020.
“Must we meet monsters at the end of the world?” | Critical Zone | University of Hamburg, Hamburg | 2019.
“Cybernetics, General Economy and the possibilities of a Universal Discipline.” | Disciplinarity in the Digital Age | Dept. of Humanities and Social Sciences - Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi | 2019.
“Sensory Precarity and the Big Data condition: a detour through experimental cinema.” | Digitality and Communication: The Cultural Logic of Data Societies | Dept. of Communication - English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad | 2018.
“Before Its Time: The Global Imaginaries of the Experiments at Films Division” | Encountering World Cinema in India | Dept. of Film Studies - Jadavpur University, Kolkata | 2016