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Cut-Pieces Lotte Hoek

Cut-Pieces By Lotte Hoek

Cut-Pieces by Lotte Hoek


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Cut-Pieces Summary

Cut-Pieces: Celluloid Obscenity and Popular Cinema in Bangladesh by Lotte Hoek

Imagine watching an action film in a small-town cinema hall in Bangladesh, and in between the gun battles and fistfights a short pornographic clip appears. This is known as a cut-piece, a strip of locally made celluloid pornography surreptitiously spliced into the reels of action films in Bangladesh. Exploring the shadowy world of these clips and their place in South Asian film culture, Lotte Hoek builds a rare, detailed portrait of the production, consumption, and cinematic pleasures of stray celluloid. Hoek's innovative ethnography plots the making and reception of Mintu the Murderer (2005, pseud.), a popular, Bangladeshi B-quality action movie and fascinating embodiment of the cut-piece phenomenon. She begins with the early scriptwriting phase and concludes with multiple screenings in remote Bangladeshi cinema halls, following the cut-pieces as they appear and disappear from the film, destabilizing its form, generating controversy, and titillating audiences. Hoek's work shines an unusual light on Bangladesh's state-owned film industry and popular practices of the obscene. She also reframes conceptual approaches to South Asian cinema and film culture, drawing on media anthropology to decode the cultural contradictions of Bangladesh since the 1990s.

Cut-Pieces Reviews

Hoek's journeys to towns with considerable distance from Dhaka are a thrill to read; viewings of Mintu the Murderer are vivid in no small terms, and the local color of hanging out at tea stalls and backrooms were page-turners. This is an inspired book, showing the life of a film from its conception to exhibition, or in this case to its ban. -- Lalitha Gopalan, University of Texas at Austin The theoretical and literary sophistication of this study of the oscillating visibility of obscenity in Bangladesh is remarkable. Taking one film as her 'field site' and using effervescent prose, Hoek presents a superb study of the production-consumption continuum of 'unstable celluloid' and richly conjures Dhaka's film studios, location shooting, and the country's small town movie theaters. The artisanal inventiveness of Bangladeshi purveyors of 'hot spice' provides a welcome counterweight to 'gentrified' Bollywood. Hoek's exceptional ethnography of the abject, the dilapidated, the mofussil, demonstrates magnificently how cinema, like almost everything else, fails to live up to its own ideals. -- Christopher Pinney, University College London Students of media anthropology and film studies cannot afford to miss out on this spectacular book. South Asia

About Lotte Hoek

Lotte Hoek is a lecturer in social anthropology at the University of Edinburgh. She received her Ph.D. from the Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research, and her research focuses on visual culture and the anthropology of media.

Table of Contents

Note on Transliteration, Translation, and Pseudonyms Acknowledgments Introduction: Before Mintu the Murderer 1. Writing Gaps : The Script of Mintu the Murderer 2. A Handheld Camera Twisted Rapidly: The Technology of Mintu the Murderer 3. Actress /Character: The Heroines of Mintu the Murderer 4. Cutting and Splicing: The Editor and Censor of Mintu the Murderer 5. Noise: The Public Sphere of Mintu the Murderer 6. Unstable Celluloid: The Exhibiti on of Mintu the Murderer Conclusion: After Mintu the Murderer Notes Bibliography Index

Additional information

CIN0231162898G
9780231162890
0231162898
Cut-Pieces: Celluloid Obscenity and Popular Cinema in Bangladesh by Lotte Hoek
Used - Good
Paperback
Columbia University Press
20131119
272
Winner of Bernard S. Cohn Book Prize, Association for Asian Studies 2016
Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
This is a used book - there is no escaping the fact it has been read by someone else and it will show signs of wear and previous use. Overall we expect it to be in good condition, but if you are not entirely satisfied please get in touch with us

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