Little cinema culture: Networks of digital files and festival on the fringes

Abstract

Abstract This article reflects on the contemporary digital turn that has transformed our audio-visual experiences fundamentally, and has affected mainstream control over production and circulation of data. Clearly, such conditions have reinvented the problematical relation between producer and receiver. In relation to such circumstances, the article focuses on marginal film festivals, especially the TENT 'Little Cinema International Festival' for experimental films and new media-art, held in Kolkata, India, since 2014. 'Little Cinema International Festival', on one hand, showcases international packages such as those from Berlinale; on the other hand, it presents curated programmes comprising videos made by first-time filmmakers from India. The article deliberates on the broad and long drawn contexts of 'festivals' and artistic endeavours, as well as the formal contours of the videos, which generate spaces for dialogues, both within the filmic text, and in the milieus in which these are shown. The emphasis on the thriving 'amateur' practice also draws attention to 'Little Magazine', 'Little Theatre' and 'Little Film' practices in West Bengal, as well as contemporary new-media transactions, which has transmediated into newer modes of articulations.