Filming from the margins: narratives, representations and forms of subversion in 21st century Tamil cinema

Tamil cinema is now one of India's most dynamic film industries. Indeed, although historically marked by the figure of the mass hero, the codes of the masala movie or an interweaving of cinema and politics, Tamil films have been undergoing a profound transformation in form and substance over the past two decades, embracing renewed aesthetics, narratives and representations.

This new wave of Tamil cinema is less concerned with showing the unity of a Tamil nation called for by "Dravidian" ideology than with revealing a Tamil society fragmented by patriarchal oppression, social inequality and the violence of casteism. These films give voice to the voiceless, the oppressed, characters marginalized by their caste, gender, religion, social status or sexual orientation. They decentralize the gaze and reveal viewpoints hitherto invisible in Tamil cinema. These works, which are defined by narrative and formal experimentation, are produced by filmmakers who have won wide recognition as the leading figures of "anti-caste cinema", Pa. Ranjith, Mari Selvaraj or Vetrimaran, or emerging independent filmmakers such as P.S. Vinothraj or Leena Manimekalai. Finally, beyond filmic works, this new wave of Tamil cinema not only questions forms of censorship, but also upends production and reception practices in Tamil Nadu and the diaspora.

This fourth Tamil Studies Day is therefore intended as a ground for multidisciplinary exchange on the issue of marginalized people in 21st-century Tamil cinema. What alternative representations and discourses does this cinema offer on marginalized people in a fragmented Tamil society? In what ways are these films an eminently political space for subversion and resistance? What are the production and reception issues behind this new wave of Tamil cinema?