Crossing over: theorising Mehta’s film trilogy; practising diasporic creativity.

This project, titled “Crossing Over: Theorising Mehta’s Film Trilogy, Practising Diasporic Creativity” articulates a critical-creative research discourse. It crosses over in terms of traversing critical scholarship on genre and audience, assuming multiplie cultural positions, as well as in bridging the theory/practice divide. The most critical theoretical intervention made by this project is to insist on a more nuanced (rather than homogeneously “transnational”) account of situated diasporic practice. The thesis comprises the critical component, and consists of a preface and five chapters on the theory, location, genre, audience and remixing of diasporic creative practice. In addition to the critical component, the project consists of a 20-minute visual essay and a web-log of production notes that constitute the creative component. The aim of the critical section is to theorise the intertwining of personal, political, and poetic attributes of diasporic creative practice through the conception, development and distribution stages. Such a theorisation demonstrates the situated nature of diasporic production and reception, and its crossover potential is exemplified through the study of Indo-Canadian filmmaker Deepa Mehta and her well known “elements” film trilogy. The critical approach is an epistemological and methodological convergence of the auteur, genre, and audience/cultural studies approaches, and hence a theoretical crossover. The visual essay, titled I Journey Like a Paisley is itself a crossover of various textual genres, as well as creatively manifesting the multiple cultural positions of diasporic practice laid out in the critical component. It documents the lives of a group of young Indian-Australians residing in Adelaide through the personal-political-poetic specificities of my diasporic lens. Production choices and screening responses are discussed briefly at the end of the critical component. For a more comprehensive understanding of the production of the theoretical and visual components and their cross overs, entries from the web-log maintained throughout the project (http://over-exposed-image.blogspot.com) have been included in the appendix. Significantly, the research discourse is established as a remixed, theoretically informed practice that crosses cultural and genre/audience boundaries.

Author dc:creator

• Khorana, Sukhmani

Advisors dc:contributor.advisor

• Griffiths, Mary
• Prosser, Rosslyn Winifred

• diaspora; creative praxis; transcultural; creative cinematic practice; Deepa Mehta; postcolonial theory; transnational audiences

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/2440/64047

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:digital.library.adelaide.edu.au:2440/64047