Indian cinema, Algerian cinema: the same postcolonial struggle?
Conference with
Arundhati Virmani, historian of colonial and contemporary India, research professor at EHESS, Marseille, author of L’Atlas historique de l’Inde (Paris, Autrement, 2015)
Salima Tenfiche, lecturer in film studies at Sorbonne Nouvelle University, author of Cinéma algérien contemporain : un renouveau post-guerre civile (Paris, Classiques Garnier, 2025)
moderated by Charlotte Deweerdt, historian by training, associate researcher at the Institut de recherches et d’études sur le monde arabe et musulman – IREMAM (Aix Marseille Université/CNRSS); cultural mediator and programmer for the Aflam festival.
Arundhati Virmani, a historian of colonial and contemporary India, and Salima Tenfiche, a specialist in Algerian cinema, set themselves the challenge of comparing two post-colonial political models through their cinematographies. Using film extracts and their respective production and distribution contexts, the two researchers propose a comparison of Indian and Algerian cinema, both during the colonial period and at the time of independence.
How did each of these national cinemas construct itself in relation to its own colonial model? What analogies and specificities emerge from this dialogue between two cinemas, two models, two cultures? What form does the tension between colonialism and nationalism take in post-independence films? This conference will provide an opportunity to reflect on the writing of history, and on colonial and decolonial narratives.
Partners: Université Paris 3-Sorbonne Nouvelle, EHESS, Association AFLAM
Conference with
Arundhati Virmani, historian of colonial and contemporary India, research professor at EHESS, Marseille, author of L’Atlas historique de l’Inde (Paris, Autrement, 2015)
Salima Tenfiche, lecturer in film studies at Sorbonne Nouvelle University, author of Cinéma algérien contemporain : un renouveau post-guerre civile (Paris, Classiques Garnier, 2025)
moderated by Charlotte Deweerdt, historian by training, associate researcher at the Institut de recherches et d’études sur le monde arabe et musulman – IREMAM (Aix Marseille Université/CNRSS); cultural mediator and programmer for the Aflam festival.
Arundhati Virmani, a historian of colonial and contemporary India, and Salima Tenfiche, a specialist in Algerian cinema, set themselves the challenge of comparing two post-colonial political models through their cinematographies. Using film extracts and their respective production and distribution contexts, the two researchers propose a comparison of Indian and Algerian cinema, both during the colonial period and at the time of independence.
How did each of these national cinemas construct itself in relation to its own colonial model? What analogies and specificities emerge from this dialogue between two cinemas, two models, two cultures? What form does the tension between colonialism and nationalism take in post-independence films? This conference will provide an opportunity to reflect on the writing of history, and on colonial and decolonial narratives.