Changing the camera lens during shooting, Lahore 2013
Book Project: Punjabi Cinema in Pakistan
This project, which has developed out of my dissertation research, investigates language ideologies and aesthetics in Pakistan through an ethnographic study of the Punjabi film industry, known popularly as “Lollywood.” Punjabi is the mother tongue of about half of the Pakistani population and the most widely-spoken language in the most politically and economically powerful province, yet it has long been relegated to a subordinate position by hegemonic political and cultural apparati, which give preference to Urdu and English. Punjabi films, like the language, are heavily denigrated by the cultural elites (particularly the English-speaking upper class) as crude and vulgar. While most studies on film and language are textual in nature, this research joins a burgeoning body of ethnographic work on cinema in finding new approaches to understanding relationships that film production, cinema-going culture, and film aesthetics have to language politics. This project ultimately takes the cinema industry as a lens through which to investigate the relationships between issues such as class, ethnicity, and gender, aesthetic and moral hegemonies, and linguistic and cultural practices in contemporary Pakistani Punjab.